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THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
ALFRED W. McCANN 



THIS FAMISHING 
WORLD 



FOOD FOLLIES THAT MAIM AND KILL 
THE RICH AND THE POOR— THAT 
CHEAT THE GROWING CHILD AND ROB 
THE PROSPECTIVE MOTHER OF HEALTH— 
THAT BURN UP MILLIONS IN TREASURE 
AND FILL UNTIMELY GRAVES— AND 
THE REMEDY 



BY 

ALFRED W. McCANN 

AUTHOR OF 
"THIRTY.CENT BREAD," "STARVING AMERICA," ETC. 




NEW XBJT YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1918, 
By George H. Doran Company 



DEC 17 1918 



Printed in the United States of America 






(?=Z 



©CI.A506910 






Three men, Jason Rogers, William Shillaber, Jr., 
and Henry J. Wright, stood by unfalteringly when 
powerful interests, by open and covert attack, by 
arrest, by civil and criminal action, threatened to de- 
stroy me. The courage of these men has made this 
book possible. To them I dedicate it with an affec- 
tion that has something in it akin to sadness. I know 
that neither they nor I can ever again pour into any 
one task in behalf of humanity the sustained effort, 
the overflowing measure of energy and devotion, the 
solemnized and consecrated will to be right at any 
cost (and the cost to them was heavy) that have tab- 
ulated this volume of suppressed truths. The dark 
and sinister shadows have been penetrated. They lie 
behind. That we shall not enter them again is but 
a reminder that all things pass. Our many battles in 
the courts and outside of them have been won but 
even in the hazards we escaped there lurks a sense 
of loss. We are not to meet them again. 



PREFACE 

The world's food problems have not ended with the end of 
war. Peace has stepped in upon the deadliest of food perils. 
The time has come to probe the depths if civilisation is to harvest 
the material and spiritual fruits of the carnage of four terrorised 
years. 

The extraordinary activities of the governments of Great 
Britain and the United States in establishing, 1918, a unified 
international food control, were inspired by a vision of a long, 
grim, hard future. The world is going to get hungrier and hun- 
grier year after year for many years to come. America during 
each of these years will become progressively responsible for 
feeding the famished mouths of Europe. As the surpluses of 
foods increase in Australia and the Argentine, the difficulty of 
carrying them to hungry Europe will also increase. 

The distance from Australia to Liverpool is 11,890 miles; 
from Australia to San Francisco is 6,966 miles; from Buenos 
Ayres to Liverpool is 6,258 miles ; from Bombay to Liverpool is 
10,680 miles. 

The distance from New York to Liverpool is only 3,036 miles. 

The tonnage saved by shipping food 3,036 miles from New 
York to Liverpool instead of by the long routes is equivalent to 
12,000,000 tons of shipping. The submarine, with its monstrous 
toll of destroyed vessels, is paralleled by the ravages that have 
depleted the dairy herds and breeding stock of America from 
which the European milk and meat supply must be reconstructed 
and restored. There is a world shortage not only of ships but of 
food. 

With Belgium and Northern France evacuated by the Ger- 
mans, 10,000,000 more mouths will have to be fed by America. 
Even Austria and Germany must be helped if anarchy is to be 
averted. 

Europe cannot starve while America is using ships to bring her 
soldiers home. If America cannot fill those ships with food on 
their return voyages they will be sent to South America, to India, 
and Australia where there will be food to put into them. Europe 

vii 



viii PREFACE 



must either draw upon those distant countries for the nourish- 
ment she needs, or she must depend upon America. 

The United States Food Administration estimates that in 
Eastern Europe there are 180,000,000 people who must be fed 
after the war if famine more horrible than the world has ever 
known, is to be averted. The total deaths among British troops 
from the beginning of the war to the end of 1918 numbered a 
little more than one million. During the same period five million 
civilians in Europe starved to death, and more are starving every- 
day. 

With the establishment of peace, all Europe becomes a bidder 
for American food and for the ships to carry it. It is for this 
reason that America faces at home a food shortage far more 
serious than any through which she passed during the war. 

Judson C. Welliver emphasises the fact that perfectly sane 
men who have brooded over this problem talk gravely about the 
possibility of famine in the United States unless measures are 
taken to establish food reserves, and later to maintain such rigid 
control of food production and distribution as will protect the 
country from having its own necessities of life taken away 
through the frantic bidding of starving multitudes on the other 
side. 

If America would do her full duty to herself and the rest of 
the world she must learn how to maintain her stamina, her health, 
her resistance to disease while sharing her vanishing supplies 
with others. 

This book tells how to meet the crisis and makes clear a 
path through which we may come out of it healthier and sturdier 
than when we entered its shadows. 



CONTENTS 

ONE: THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP IS PILING HIGHER 

SECTION PAGE 

I God Has Prescribed 15 

II Food for Health or Disease? 17 

III The World Faces a Rebirth 20 

IV Meaningless Phrases 24 

V Approaching Reform 28 

VI Red Blood Depends on Food 31 

VII Food Calcium and Tuberculosis 34 

VIII Denatured Foods Destroy Life 36 

IX Human Variations of a Divine Theme 39 

X Natural Immunity versus Business 42 

XI The Neglected Child of 1912 the Soldier of 1918 . 45 

XII What Our Teeth Disclose 48 

XIII Why Have a Six-year Molar? 51 

XIV "Dust Thou Art and Unto Dust Thou Shalt Re- 

turn" . .. S3 

TWO: TWO KINDS OF FOOD— THE CONSTRUCTIVE— THE 

DESTRUCTIVE 

XV More Precious than Silver and Gold 61 

XVI The Influence of Earth Salts on Life .... 64 

XVII Old at Twenty-five, Young at Sixty 67 

XVIII The Human Body 72 

ix 



x CONTENTS 

SECTION ,PAGE 

XIX Breaking It Down 74 

XX Subtle Activity of Mineral Salts 79 

XXI Construction Within, Destruction Without . . 81 

XXII Food Minerals Essential to Life ..... 83 

XXIII The Thyroid Gland a Poison Destroyer . . . &6 

XXIV Commercialism Disarms Nature 88 

XXV Wonders of Plant and Animal Life .... 91 

XXVI The "Ash" of Food . 94 

XXVII Calcium in the Living Body 96 

XXVIII Children Suffer, Prospective Mothers Decline 98 

XXIX Add Art and Subtract Nature 101 

XXX Walking with a Broken Staff 103 

XXXI "Digestibility" and "Indigestibility" . . . 106 

XXXII Constipation 109 

XXXIII Suspected Causes of Cancer in 

THREE: WHY MODERN REFINING PROCESSES ARE MORE 

DEADLY THAN WAR 

XXXIV Corn Meal or Cornless Meal 117 

XXXV Anemia, Tuberculosis, Heart Disease . . . . 121 

XXXVI Rejected Food Minerals a Mountain of Folly . 123 

XXXVII Outer Parts of the Grains and the Nervous Sys- 
tem . . 125 

XXXVIII Stunting the Growth of the Young .... 127 

XXXIX Increased Consumption of Meat . . . . . 130 

XL Rice, Scoured and Polished 132 

XLI Natural Brown Rice 134 



CONTENTS xi 



SECTION PAGE 

XLII A Spoonful of Gravy 136 

XLIII Medicines Added to Sugar and Starch ... 139 

XLIV Bases and Acids in Food 142 

XLV Calories and "Science" 144 

XLVI Calories and Gasoline 149 

XLVII Acid Formers and Females 153 

XLVIII Salt Intake and Output 155 

XLIX Maternity and Tuberculosis 156 

L The Advertising Agency 161 

LI Cow Feed, Horse Feed, and Food 164 

FOUR: EIGHT POISON SQUADS THAT CRY FOR ACTION 

LII The Madeira-Mamore Case 169 

LIII Spurning Monkey Food 173 

LIV Sherman, Forbes, Hart, Maxwell, Steinitz, Za- 
dic, Leipziger, Rohman, Gumpert, Ehrstrom, 

Mettler, Sinclair, Voit 178 

LV Elizabeth County Jail 180 

LVI The British Steamer "Dewa" 183 

LVII The Mississippi Penitentiary Poison Squad . . 187 

LVIII Watery Tissues of the Hog, Pasty Complexion 

of the Human 190 

LIX The "Kronprinz Wilhelm" Poison Squad ... 192 

LX Two Hundred and Fifty-five Days! . . . . 196 

LXI American Meals 201 

LXII German Results 203 

LXIII The "Kronprinz Wilhelm" Cure r 209 



xii CONTENTS 



SECTION PAGE 

LXIV The Height of Children Cut Down . . . . 215 

LXV Donald B. McMillan's Food 220 

FIVE: AMAZING CONFUSION OF CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 

LXVI Ignoring the Commonplace . 229 

LXVII Hutchinson's Teaspoon . . 231 

LXVIII Strange Conclusions of Lusk . . . ... 233 

LXIX Disease Germs Bad Where They Do Not Belong 236 

LXX Ailing Instructors in "Isms" and "Ologies" . 237 

LXXI Thin-haired Women and Bald-headed Men . . 239 

LXXII A Pretty Test .241 

LXXIII Experiments with Chickens for Boys and Girls 243 

LXXIV What the Children Will Learn 244 

SIX: HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 

LXXV "Unsound Flour" Even Though White ... 251 

LXXVI Bleached Flour . 253 

LXXVII The "Mixed Flour" Evil 255 

LXXVIII The Devitalized Five-cent Loaf ..... 257 

LXXIX A Paid Advertisement 260 

LXXX "The Lid Is Off" . . .262 

LXXXI Imitation Graham . 263 

LXXXII Physicians Seek in Vain 265 

LXXXIII Dollars Dictate to Science 267 

LXXXIV The Awakening of the Teacher . . . ." . 270 

LXXXV More Testimony vr "'.~~ t T: . . 271 



CONTENTS xiii 



SECTION PAGE 

LXXXVI Courage of Senior Surgeon Banks 274 

LXXXVII The Trade Challenge Trade Lies 277 

LXXXVIII Calcutta and the Rice Plague 279 

LXXXIX A Paradox 280 

SEVEN: WHY FAMINE FOLLOWS THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL 

SUGAR 

XC Old Brown Sugar 285 

XCI New White Sugar 288 

XCII Sugaritis 291 

XCIII The Honey Bee 295 

XCIV Honey 298 

XCV Glucose 300 

XCVI Glucositis 302 

XCVII Why the Excess 304 

XCVIII Can We Ignore This? 306 

XCIX Infantile Paralysis 309 

EIGHT: PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES OF MILK AND MEAT 

C Milk 315 

CI Milk and Tuberculosis . . ..'.<. . . 317 

CII Not Pasteurized 320 

CIII " Plugging " the Cow 321 

CIV The Certified Herd 324 

CV Old Offenders 326 

CVI America's Kidneycides 329 

CVII Meatology 332 



xiv CONTENTS 

SECTION PAGE 

CVIII Old when Tired 337 

CIX Food and Fatigue 339 

CX The End of Fatigue 341 

NINE: WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW OF THE MYS- 
TERIES OF FOOD 

CXI Iron and the Raisin 347 

CXII Cornell's O. K 348 

CXIII Potatoes, Parsnips, Carrots and Turnips . . .349 

CXIV Fruit 352 

CXV Sulphurous Acid 355 

CXVI "Chops" Waste and Jelly . 358 

CXVII Molasses and Cane Syrup 359 

CXVIII Rots and Spots 362 

CXIX Bakery Wonders 365 

CXX Shortening with Petroleum 366 

CXXI Labels and Standards » . . 368 

CXXII Standards and Labels .371 

CXXIII Cheating Cattle 372 

CXXIV Pasteur and God 375 

CXXV Whence Came Life? 379 

CXXVI Patriotism . . 382 



ONE: THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 
IS PILING HIGHER 



ONE: THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP IS 
PILING HIGHER 

§ 1 — GOD HAS PRESCRIBED 

Is there any evidence that will stand the scrutiny of modern 
judge and jury, to indicate that God has prescribed a formula 
for the nourishment of the human family? 

There is. We shall see it in all its wonder. 

Does this formula endow human nature with disease-resisting 
vitality ? 

Does it fortify the prospective mother against the ravages so 
often suffered by her ? 

Does it protect the infant and control the development of the 
child? 

Does it usher the adult uneventfully into the shadows of age? 

Does it stand on guard to protect men of good-will, their 
wives and children, against the assaults of those malign forces 
which seemingly, as if man were completely abandoned to the 
malicious whims of a superior but malevolent power, attack him 
from all sides? 

The imperious answer is "Yes." The Twentieth Century 
laboratory, which has nothing to do with the spiritual nature of 
man, is witness to the truth. 

When man's house is built its wonderfully organised inmate is 
constantly wearing and wasting away. Repair is necessary; in- 
cessant, never-ending repair. 

The repair materials are at hand. They are found nowhere 
but in food, in food alone. 

No officer tolerates an unfit soldier. No business man tolerates 
an inefficient employe. No musician tolerates a jarring note. 
No physician tolerates incompatibles in his prescriptions, but in 
twenty-million homes in the United States to-day there is com- 
placent toleration for food abuses that sap the stamina of the 
race. 

15 






16 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

These abuses, despite what is now known of them as a result 
of government research, parade the signatures of learned author- 
ities, who sell their testimony for a fee, so that, as if by necro- 
mancy, the uninitiated may accept eminent names in lieu of miss- 
ing elements in manipulated foods. Upon those missing elements 
life itself depends. 

To expose this disorder in all its deadly significance, specialized 
effort has been made for years, but until 1912 little progress 
was recorded. 

Public utterances from the platform and through the press, 
including at one time, 1916-1917, as many as forty-one newspapers 
scattered throughout the largest cities of the country, were greeted 
in high places with lofty sarcasm, and swept aside by the author- 
ities as unworthy of consideration. 

Finally with the aid of a great metropolitan journal came a 
long period of dragging the truth into the courts. 

During the years dating from January, 191 3, to the middle 
of 1918, in Municipal, State and Federal District Courts, that 
journal, the New York Globe, was responsible for the conviction 
of three hundred food sophisticators who, prior to their prosecu- 
tion, had been able to hide behind the screens erected by the 
authorities, all of whom denied that its "unsupported" charges 
were true. 

The court records of these cases, without an exception, have 
withstood the scrutiny of judge and jury and the fruits of that 
long and costly struggle are now passed to the people. 

We know to-day, apart from the mere frauds that tax the 
pocketbook but do not affect human health, that a hundred food 
evils of grave significance constitute many of the building ma- 
terials upon which young America, as well as stricken Europe, de- 
pends for growth and sustenance, under the eyes of man-made law 
that does not interfere. 

Every pound of these food frauds is a pound of excess baggage 
borne by the growing child, the expectant mother and the invalid. 

Every pound of food juggled, changed, denatured or chemi- 
cally treated is balanced by a pound of human flesh. 

Every pound of such food defies nature's standards, so marvel- 
lously formulated that each of them bears upon it the mark of 
divine origin. Advancing this assertion I shall prove that it is 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP IT 

not tainted by mysticism or fervor; that it stands untrembling 
under the coldest light of pagan science ; that our own government 
has helped to focus that light upon it. 

Commercial wizardry attempting the impossible task of sup- 
plying the human family with food that will not support the life 
of animals, strives to maintain the dignity of its effort. Although 
thus far successful in its purposes it cannot longer ignore the 
truth, for from every laboratory in Europe and America are 
handed down to meet it indictments of such gravity that they 
can neither be disguised nor concealed. 

Wondrous are the operations of Mother Nature, but she will 
suffer no wilful abuse. Her laws were established by a Higher 
Power, and man who feebly attempts to imitate them in his 
construction of a flying machine or in the development of his 
herds, turns his back upon that miracle of life, a growing child, 
and disdains to believe, or pretends to doubt, that the child is 
also subject to law. 



§ 2 — FOOD FOR HEALTH OR DISEASE? 

Live stock and crops are fed according to fixed laws. Infants 
and children, men and women, are fed in ignorance and caprice. 

Our daily food, less understood after years of agitation than 
the referendum or the fourth dimension, is so masked in mystery 
that scarcely one in ten thousand can give a definition of the 
phrase. 

To the housewife and those dependent upon her judgment for 
health and life nothing is more vital, yet few are the homes in 
which the simple laws of nutrition are applied. The people no 
longer know the origin of their food or how it is prepared. They 
have lost control. 

Babies are born every day, and every day children are fitted 
for school. Though food is their first and most important neces- 
sity, its knowledge is chiefly confined to owners of stock farms, 
producers of prize sheep, horses, poultry, hogs and blue ribbon 
cows. 

Intelligent herdsmen apply their knowledge of its meaning and 



18 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

measure results according to fixed operations when not deceived 
by the feed manufactures. They know the growth, development 
and vigour of their animals depend upon the operation of clearly 
defined and inviolable laws. 

They make a business of feeding for certain desired ends. To 
them pure food is not a mystery. It is the means whereby they 
supply proper building materials to the physical needs of the 
creatures in which their money is invested ; the instrument with 
which they prevent disorder and sickness among their herds, 
flocks, kennels and litters. 

The average farmer, as far as his soil is concerned, instinctively 
recognizes the meaning of pure food. He knows if he does not 
supply his vegetables and grains with the right kind of soil food 
he will reap a stunted and a feeble crop, or suffer a crop failure. 

The United States Government has developed around this 
truth one of its costliest departments, the chief of which, in the 
person of the Secretary of Agriculture, is a member of the Presi- 
dent's cabinet. 

That live stock and crops should receive the benefit of man's 
interest in pure food, while thus far in the affairs of our national 
development infants and children do not, is symbolic of the soul- 
sickness of the world. 

Woman's interest in pure food has not yet crystallised, though 
she has love instead of commercial expediency to inspire her. Is 
love less potent than profit ? 

Thousands of untimely deaths, the true causes of which are 
rarely suspected, are occasioned by pitiable ignorance of the 
simplest of God's laws, yet upon its serene though neglected 
splendor beams the infinite love of the Creator. 

The Journal of the American Medical Association declared, 
July 20, 191 8, that when the announcement was made by the 
Bureau of Child Hygiene of New York City that between 12 
and 15 per cent, of its school children are underfed, it was re- 
ceived with scepticism by some and with surprise by others. The 
world refuses to believe. 

F. A. Manny of the New York Association for Improving the 
Condition of the Poor declares, as a result of systematic studies 
made in New York City, that at least one-third of the school 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 19 

children are so much below the standard of growth as to call for 
special nutritional care. The world disregards the fact. 

There are now in the public and parochial schools of Greater 
New York more than 2,000,000 children. Of other children under 
six years of age and between the ages of six and sixteen not in 
school, either at home or at work, there are nearly 2,000,000 more. 

New York City alone boasts of nearly 500,000 children in need 
of nutritional attention, but the problem is not a New York prob- 
lem or a Chicago problem or a San Francisco problem ; it is not 
even an American problem. 

Back in 1910 the chief medical officer of the English Board of 
Education declared as a result of data collected by him that de- 
fective nutrition stands in the foreground as the most important 
of all physical defects from which school children suffer. 

In 1906 Dr. W. R. P. Emerson collected into a class a number 
of the weakest and most poorly nourished children from several 
thousands of patients in the Boston Dispensary. These children 
were "fed up." Their response was magic. 

Dr. C. H. Smith duplicated this experiment in connection with 
Bellevue Hospital, New York City, reporting it possible to make 
57 per cent, of the under-nourished children gain nearly twice the 
average rate for their ages, and 22 per cent, gain at about the 
average rate, a total of 79 per cent, gaining at or better than the 
average rate. 

These results, obtained under most adverse circumstances, are 
ignored where no problems make their application difficult. 

Lack of food is not responsible for the tragedy. Rejection of 
the right kind of food is behind it. 

Ignorance in the home is not the only highway to physical 
infirmity and death. The widest road, never marked with a sign 
post, is the road that leads through commercial greed to the little 
white casket. 

We propose to take this road at whose every turn the laws of 
God are deliberately broken, so that we may learn just how, 
although so sacred when applied to animal life, they are out- 
raged and debauched in the food factory. 

Where the fault originates in the caprice of the housewife 
herself, through thoughtlessness of her own or inheritance from 
grandmother's superstitions, the picturesque, wonderfully inter- 



20 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

esting, though tragic results of such household sins, when ap- 
plied to the diet of white mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, monkeys, 
chickens and cows will be disclosed. 

Where the abuse is purely commercial the mask will be torn 
off, and in such instances as are borne in lust for gain at the ex- 
pense of human life, the natural, obvious, practical reform will 
be pointed out. 

For the old abuses, for which politics, clever lawyers and com- 
mercial scientists have succeeded in erecting a flimsy protection 
in the defence of unnatural and Godless practices, there will be 
no mercy. 

The physician who follows these pages will come into posses- 
sion of facts not to be obtained in the medical schools of Europe 
or America. He will receive new information with regard to 
many of the causes of malnutrition, anemia, neurasthenia, edema, 
Bright's disease, diabetes, cancer, hardening of the arteries, 
tuberculosis and other preventable diseases which, in the form of 
needless pain, are so frequently visited upon the bodies of the 
ignorant and unwary. 

Whispering through the Twentieth Century laboratory the 
voice of God can be heard. It requires no strained ear to catch 
its echoes as they come up centuries old from Genesis, Leviticus, 
and Deuteronomy in waves that roll from enamelled wall to 
enamelled wall, protesting in the name of the cradle, the nursery, 
the kindergarten, the school, the home and workshop against the 
special privileges and follies that to-day as never before must 
render their long overdue account to a grim jury of awakened 
mother love. Faith in the all- wise but unheeded provisions of the 
Creator is the instant need. 



§ 3 — THE WORLD FACES A REBIRTH 

The reconstruction following the war, in which for many years 
not only the allies but also America will have to deal with the 
hardest of hard conditions, has already begun its clamour for the 
corporal as well as the spiritual reclamation of man. 

The tearing down of the world is actually less visible in the 






THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 21 

devastated regions where cities, towns, villages and country sides 
are now but scorched and broken patches than in the physical 
ravages which all mankind dumbly suffered throughout the war, 
and which for many years prior to the war had been eating into 
the health of the white race of all lands. Are we civilised? Far 
from it! 

In May, 1918, in New York City alone, Dr. S. Josephine Baker 
reported 216,000 children suffering from malnutrition, with all 
that malnutrition involves, as a direct result of the war, although 
America had been in the war scarcely a year. The war has taught 
us that our children do indeed constitute our second line of de- 
fence, just as the Boer war opened the eyes of Great Britain to 
the infirmities of its second line of defence. 

During the Boer war so many men applying for service were 
rejected because of physical defects which could have been 
avoided or overcome that the whole British Empire, shocked 
into a realisation of its neglect of the child, turned its belated 
attention to the deficiencies thus so appallingly revealed. 

In America's first draft 500,000 of our ''best" young men in 
the very flower of their manhood were rejected as physically unfit 
for service. 

After the long struggle our nation, for many years, will be 
engaged in tabulating two kinds of men, those that helped and 
those that did not; the fit and the unfit; the accepted and the 
rejected. 

The finest types of physical manhood entered the service, the 
others were left at home, to father their kind. 

In this single fact humanity faces a reaction against which, 
if it would tune up the vigor and stamina of infants yet unborn, 
must be thrown all its conscience, intelligence and energy. 

We can no longer ignore our children as they have been ignored, 
otherwise our inspiring accomplishments in organising all the 
resources of America will degenerate into a mere expediency, 
leaving behind a long trail of calamity and misery. By looking 
squarely at the facts and acting upon them, our war energies, if 
they are also applied to the child, will in the physical sense 
literally regenerate America, while contributing at the same time 
to the rebuilding of stricken Europe. 

As a nation we were long content to ignore the Child in the 



%2 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

presence of the Moneybag, giving to the dollar an artificial value 
which war has taught us, to our amazement, it did not possess, 
even though we had been pouring all our foolish energies into it, 
permitting the Child, our second line of defence, to take care of 
itself. 

Even New Zealand, in spite of its boasted accomplishments, 
found herself in the Moneybag class until she discovered the 
lamentable deficiencies of the young men who applied and were 
examined for her military service. 

Dr. Truby King in February, 191 8, stopped off in New York on 
his way to England to reorganise child welfare work under the 
British Government. Through him we learned that the young 
men of New Zealand who were supposed to be supremely fit for 
military service were found by Major General Sir Frederic 
Morris so lamentably unfit that 60 of every 100 examined had 
to be rejected. 

Tracing their unfitness to its cause, Dr. King was forced to 
the conclusion that New Zealand's absurd food habits, quite 
similar to our own, were responsible for the alarming evils re- 
vealed by medical examination. 

In 19 1 7 New York City boasted that only 88 of its babies died 
of every 1,000 born. This infant mortality record, compared with 
the record of many other American cities, is on the surface worthy 
of note, but Dr. King is responsible for the reduction of the infant 
mortality rate of New Zealand not to 88 per thousand, but to 5 
per thousand, the lowest rate in the world. 

In accomplishing this extraordinary achievement which has re- 
sulted in the British Government's recognition of the value of his 
services, Dr. King openly admits that he has followed precedents 
established here in America, even though they have been ignored 
here, and that his success in lowering the infant death rate in 
New Zealand is due to his having practiced principles developed 
in the United States. 

The shame of it ! 

We gave our American invention, the submarine, to the Ger- 
mans. We gave our American invention, the aeroplane, to the 
Germans. 

We have not applied to our own benefit the principles we gave 
Dr. Truby King for the benefit of New Zealand. 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 23 

Yes, we have been asleep with the Moneybag under our pil- 
low. We were gassed by its fumes. 

What we might have spent to make America the most won- 
derful human thing under God's heavens we did not spend for 
that purpose, because in our blindness we could not see the 
simplest, the most wonderful and the most inexorable of God's 
laws, as it lay ignored, neglected and broken at our feet. 

We are spending that money now. Never before were such 
expenditures recorded in the history of the world ! 

We are emptying the Moneybag, but little if any of its con- 
tents is being applied to our second line of defence, the Child. 
No wonder the bitter Bernard Shaw impotently raves over the 
infant mortality of Ireland ! 

Dr. Baker has told us of the handicap suffered by France 
through her fallen birth rate, a tragedy which made it almost 
impossible to maintain her army at its proper quota. 

France recognises at last the importance of the child. Even 
in England the decreasing birth rate is wholly responsible for 
the loss of millions of potential lives. 

At the Royal Institute of Public Health, June, 1918, Sir Ber- 
nard Mallet declared to an audience of London physicians that 
while the war has filled the graves it has emptied the cradles. 

In England and Wales the births recorded for 1913 were 
881,890. In 19 1 7 they had fallen to 668,346, a decline of 24 per 
cent. 

Up to the beginning of 1918 England and Wales had lost on 
the scale of potential lives 650,000 unborn infants. During the 
same period Germany lost in potential lives the equivalent of 
4.5 per cent, of her total pre-war population, Austria lost 5 per 
cent, and Hungary 7 per cent. 

The war up to June, 1918, had cost the belligerents not less 
than 12,500,000 potential lives. These losses, added to the 20,- 
000,000 casualties of battle, show that race suicide on a colossal 
scale is but one of the outstanding results of German militarism. 

Terrible as are these fruits of a Godless philosophy of life 
and death, the infirmities needlessly visited upon the living are 
incalculably more appalling, and the tragedy of it is that they are 
wholly controllable and preventable. 

The hour to face the truth has come. The world steeped in 



M THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

luxury and seeking only physical comforts, had shut its eyes too 
long to the very means whereby comfort is attained. 

Seeing but not comprehending, reading but not understanding, 
mankind, chastened by suffering, is beginning again to look to 
God for the pearls it had cast to swine in its hours of material 
blindness. 

Among those pearls one of great price proclaims its lustre out 
of the darkness as if by its very beauty it would call all men into 
the area of its radiance, where reverently they may behold under 
the softness and sweetness of its light one of the many broken 
laws under whose benevolent operations, when recognised and 
applied, disease itself is banished, infirmities healed, health and 
strength attained. 

To the task of revealing the glory of this pearl and its mean- 
ing to the reconstruction of civilization, these words and those 
to follow are devoted. 



§ 4 — MEANINGLESS PHRASES 

In the last four years 1,500,000 children under ten years of 
age have died in the United States. With little knives and forks, 
with little baby spoons, with chubby little hands manifesting many 
of the outward signs of health, they dug their little graves. 

Hundreds of thousands of adults hurrying to untimely graves 
kept them company. Why ? 

As late as April, 1918, the United States Public Health Service 
called attention to one of the many preventable ravages of food 
folly. 

"There may be plenty of milk or eggs or meat," said the gov- 
ernment, "but if you prefer to live mainly on cereals, starchy 
foods and sweets pellagra will result." 

This warning will not be heeded because the people cannot 
understand it. They do not know what the government means 
by "cereals," for the reason that 90 per cent, of the cereals now 
prepared for human consumption in no manner resemble phy- 
siologically the cereals provided by Mother Nature. 

The government's phrase "starchy foods and sweets" has no 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 25 

meaning for the plain people who do not know that pure starch 
or pure sugar are not found in nature. 

Pure starch and pure sugar are laboratory refinements from 
which the "impurities" essential to life have been removed. 

The government's phrase ' 'pellagra" has little significance for 
the average man or woman because "only 150,000 cases" occur 
every year in the United States, and until a few months ago the 
entire medical world attributed its outbreak to every cause under 
the sun except the right one. 

The government now knows that pellagra is a food deficiency 
disease, but there are a hundred stopping places this side of 
pellagra, every one of which is a direct attack upon our second 
line of defence. 

Our Washington authorities, although they have occasionally 
spoken in plain terms, do not now refer to the menace of "re- 
fined" cereals, of "improved" starches, of "denatured" sweets 
and fats, of "patent" wheat flour, of "degerminated" corn flour, of 
"polished" rice, of "demineralised" corn starch and potato starch, 
of "robbed" rye flour, of "pearled" barley, of "refined" sugar or 
of any of the other manipulated foods sold in beautifully deco- 
rated packages that attack the vitality of prospective mother, 
nursing mother, child, soldier and civilian worker. 

It is not enough that we heed these evils before they reach the 
pellagra stage. 

Where there are but 150,000 cases of pellagra there are mil- 
lions of cases of malnutrition which, though they do not reach 
the pellagra stage, are nevertheless symptoms of the great national 
folly which commercial science encourages and defends. 

"The increased price of food is responsible," says Dr. Baker, 
"for the 216,000 children of New York City now suffering from 
undernourishment." 

"It is most important," says the United States Public Health 
Service, "that at least three glasses (one and one-half pints) 
and preferably more milk be taken daily." The irony of these 
comments is solemn. 

The importance of eggs, fresh vegetables and fresh fruits is 
emphasised as in the past has been emphasised the importance of 
whole grain foods, whole wheat bread, whole corn bread, natural 
brown rice. But what are the facts ? 



26 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

High prices do not keep these "offsetting" foods out of the 
hands of the poor. They are not offered to the poor at any price. 
Yet the government itself tells us that among the poor the 
symptoms of malnutrition are mostly prevalent. 

On page 484, No. 14, Volume 33 of the Public Health Reports 
issued by the United States Public Health Service, are found these 
words : 

"The unbalanced diet composed mainly of biscuits, corn bread, 
grits, hominy, rice, gravy and syrup with only a few vegetables 
develops disease." 

Why such foods develop disease, and why all other similar 
foods, of which these are but typical, develop disease, will be ex- 
plained here in the government's own phrases, although they are 
phrases rarely acted upon by the individual and never by the food 
manufacturer. 

We now know that our second line of defence is in danger. 
A little later we shall clearly see why. 

"The time par excellence," says Dr. Truby King, "for the 
growth of the brain and nervous system is during the prenatal 
period and the first two years of life. 

"The whole future of the individual is determined for him 
before he is four years old, just as that of a calf is determined by 
the time it has reached the age of six months. 

"That so many newly born infants survive in spite of the 
heavy toll taken among them is due to the fact that nature safe- 
guards the child even at the expense of the mother's health." 

This is indeed true but the mother's health is also part of the 
second line of defence, and proper food for her is just as im- 
portant as proper food for the child; just as important as proper 
food for the workman; just as important as proper food for the 
boys in the trenches. 

Our moneybags must be opened still wider. Their contents 
pouring forth cannot longer ignore these facts. We must know 
what proper food is; we must deal with forces able thus far to 
prevent the government's acting upon facts which the govern- 
ment itself has succeeded in establishing. That they are pigeon- 
holed in Washington makes the task less difficult. 

At this trying period in our national life, when we are bearing 
intense strains, the food of the plain people, measured by govern- 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 27 

ment standards, is more impoverished than ever. The function 
of the Food Administration as determined by itself was not to 
educate the public. 

High prices and restricted diet mean wealth for a few profiteers, 
but such wealth does not flow into the war chest, nor into the re- 
construction work that for many years must be done, nor does it 
prepare America for the future she now faces. 

All will accept the proposition that the stricken parents of 
children who die before their time should move the world to avert 
these preventable tragedies, but the impulse rarely asserts itself 
until all is over. 

The time to educate parents is not after the child is laid low. 
All the food knowledge this side of heaven will not put life and 
health into the tissues of a corpse. 

Parents, clinging to old-fashioned traditions, knowing little of 
what goes on behind factory walls, are prone to regard the work 
of child conservation as a fad. 

As a rule they refuse to accept the plainest facts unless proved 
in picturesque fashion. Fortunately, such picturesque proofs are 
at hand. 

We shall peep behind traditions, if only for the purpose of 
receiving a shock that will excite our curiosity. Such shock is 
near. 

Most of us will not stir from the beaten path tramped hard by 
the millions of feet of little children unless we are pushed by 
brute force. Brute force is happily available. 

In the last four years in the United States 3,000,000 little 
feet have ceased pattering. This is not an idle statement made 
in a year of sensations. Its proof is found in the mortality 
statistics prepared by the Bureau of Census, Department of Com- 
merce, and submitted to the Secretary of Commerce by the 
Director of the Census. 

Gruesome? Yes. 

True? Yes. But what of it? unless we are ready to take 
soundings, even though to do so means parting with much old- 
fashioned indifference that sits on an eggshell of happiness, ever 
ready to crack. 









28 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 5 — APPROACHING REFORM 

There is a peg in your shoe. It hurts your foot. It bruises 
and cuts the flesh. It sets up an irritation. You consult a doctor. 
He applies oils, lotions and germicides. He bandages the sore 
spot. You continue his treatment but complain that your foot 
will not heal. 

Of course not. 

Some day it may occur to you to remove the peg. Nature will 
then do her own healing, but not until the cause of her woe has 
been removed. 

All the serums, antitoxins, tonics and therapeutic agents of 
medical science will not heal our physical disorders while that peg 
remains in the national shoe. It is the cause of baffling infirmi- 
ties that defy the scalpel of the surgeon and the prescription of 
the physician. 

It is the unseen agent whose work laughs defiance at the sound- 
est scientific revelations of the laboratory and clinic. 

In Berlin, April, 19 13, at the Sixth International Conference 
on Physio-Therapy, it was named in the following words : 

"Natural immunity to disease is very closely allied to nutrition. 
As soon as a slight disturbance of nutrition occurs the child loses 
this natural immunity. 

"An infection of the mouth with thrush is not possible in a 
normal-born and breast-fed child. The bottle-fed child is at a 
great disadvantage as compared with the breast-fed child. 

"One-sided nutrition with carbohydrates (starches, sugars, 
table syrups, candies, white breadstuffs, denatured breakfast 
foods, refined cereals) injures the immunity of children. 

"Tuberculous children nourished with such carbohydrate foods 
succumb more easily than when nourished on natural foods. 

"The water content of the body is inversely proportionate to 
the natural immunity. Water-logged tissues lose their immunity. 
Refined foods increase unnecessarily the amount of water in the 
tissues, and promote a rapid rise in the body weight. 

"Children fed on a carbohydrate diet become water-logged, 
fat, and show slight resisting power against infection. 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 29 

"The lack of absorbable calcium salts in the diet favours the 
water-logging." 

These words, describing the peg, may mean little to you now, 
but before we have proceeded far they will be repeated under 
such clear white light that you will marvel over their wisdom 
and simplicity, seeing that many of the miseries which we rashly 
and presumptuously attribute to Divine Providence are visited 
upon us not by God but by ourselves. 

To understand the meaning of the phrase "our daily bread" 
we must first discover how the food manufacturer operates ; what 
he does to accomplish his purpose ; why he does it, and how to put 
an end to his trickery without the necessity of invoking legisla- 
tion. Legislation will not bring about reform. Politicians, food 
industries and newspapers will not permit it. 

We must first learn that the greatest temptation to juggle 
with food products is inspired by the people themselves. 

The subject of insufficient wage or industrial injustice is not 
going to creep into this discussion, but in passing it must be said 
that in scanty incomes is frequently born the false standard of 
judgment which attributes an artificial value to "bulk," overlook- 
ing substance and quality. 

Competition, when based on quality of product and honesty of 
workmanship, is the very life of trade decency, but in foolish 
and desperate competition which inspires fraud, false standards 
are imposed in all their evil influence upon society. 

When the size and price satisfy the individual few questions are 
asked. Most people are prone to accept even the shape of the 
package or its colour as evidence that its contents are all they 
ought to be. No questions are asked as to whether they will 
support life or slowly, insidiously, stealthily burrow under the 
foundation of the living temple to destroy it. 

To gain a trade advantage over a competitor the food manu- 
facturer makes his strongest appeal to the eye. Thus begins the 
work of puffing, bulking, filling, extending. Then follows the 
trick of conferring upon the bulk product that shadow of honesty 
which masks it against discovery. 

At this point deception is braced with added flavour, manufac- 
tured in the laboratory. The "innocent" and "harmless" mass 



30 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

is kept from disintegrating by the use of legalised preservatives. 
Food is embalmed ! 

In addition to the filler evil the artificial colour evil, the flavour 
evil and the preservative evil there is a fifth and still more in- 
sidious evil responsible for tenfold, yes a hundredfold, more 
miseries than all the other evils combined. 

The filler evil is now regarded as a crime by all State Depart- 
ments of Agriculture where poultry food, cattle food or fertiliser 
is concerned. 

The Federal government also recognises the filler evil when an 
attempt is made to ship a sophisticated food from one state into 
another, unless its manufacturer leaves in the form of small 
print upon the label, some inconspicuous tell-tale evidence behind. 

Foods consumed in the state in which they are manufactured, 
not passing into any other state, need not declare this tell-tale 
evidence except in a few communities where an alert commis- 
sioner is active. 

The experiment stations of nearly every state in the Union 
have discussed the enormity of adulterating cow food and earth 
food. These abuses have been followed occasionally by successful 
prosecutions, never heard of by the plain people, although they 
are based on no other ground than the evil so complacently 
tolerated in the preparation of human food. 

Cattle food and fertilizer are considered by the State and 
Federal government of more importance than human food. 

The reasons behind this inconsistency will be revealed in their 
proper place. 

Dr. Harvey W. Wiley's first work, back in 1882, was the ejec- 
tion of worthless fillers from the earth-food fertilisers sold to 
farmers for replenishing their soil with the food elements con- 
sumed by last year's crop, that there might be no crop failure the 
following year. 

Commercial cow food, loaded with inert and foodless sub- 
stances, was found, like commercial earth food, to fail utterly in 
the work it was intended to accomplish. Now, after 37 years of 
literally astonishing experiments with soil, plants and animals, 
and with an almost thorough knowledge of the cause of soil 
starvation and the cause of animal disease, the human family still 
persists in ignoring the meaning of pure food for its children. 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 31 

Those who manufacture foodless foods for human beings tell 
us we have no constitutional right to interfere with their in- 
dustries. Education of the masses, however, will bring about the 
necessary reform. It can be brought about in no other way. 



§ 6 — RED BLOOD DEPENDS ON FOOD 

In the vast mixture of greed, ignorance, selfishness, oppression, 
sickness, darkness, vanity, sham, crime, love, compassion, justice, 
charity and truth which we call civilisation, nothing but nation- 
wide publicity will accomplish for pure food what legislation has 
failed to do. Enlightened selfishness is not the noblest motive 
but it frequently leads to noble ends. 

Newspapers and magazines through which the public obtains 
a large share of its canned information cannot now tell the truth 
about foods because their principal sources of income are derived 
through the advertisements of the very foods which truthful 
columns would be forced to condemn if they referred to them 
at all. 

The publications which remain dumb to the most important 
issue of the home fail to see that by exposing the truth they would 
automatically develop advertisers to take the place of those whose 
truth-suppressing policies have sealed their pages with unholy 
silence. 

The business managers of periodicals and dailies have said to 
me in substance, "Eagles, crows, squirrels were never taught 
anything of food ; see how they thrive, Why create a controversy 
where there is none? 

"In its home among the trees the monkey is ignorant of the 
meaning of pure food. No hunter ever captured a monkey in its 
schoolless habitat suffering from appendicitis, tuberculosis, 
tumour or swollen glands. 

"The angler catches his hundred fish ; the trawler's net catches 
its millions. All are healthy, firm and fit for the frying pan and 
grid. 

"The horse is immune to tuberculosis. So is the sheep. 

"Of every 10,000 sheep killed in the slaughter house the 



32 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

lesions of disease are found in only one, and sometimes not 
even in that one. 

"Our fathers and mothers were taught nothing of pure food, 
yet millions of us are still alive. If pure food had been neces- 
sary we would all be dead. 

"This certainly proves that knowing nothing of the meaning 
of carbohydrates, proteins, fats and ash, we do not need to know." 

By such phrases the subject is dismissed, yet by such phrases do 
they who oppose the truth stand convicted. 

Remove the monkey from its natural home and its natural 
food and the superintendent of the menagerie will bury it before 
its time. 

Come with me to the zoological gardens in Bronx Park and see 
for yourself what happens to the chimpanzee in captivity. All the 
primates die before their time. Tuberculosis, pneumonia, tumours, 
kill them. 

Later I shall tell you what they eat and why they die. 

Nature's formula and man's "improvements" upon it have noth- 
ing in common. Pollute the streams and change thereby the char- 
acter of the food upon which fish subsist and they are no longer 
fit for the dinner table. 

Debase the food of the horse and sheep as we debase the food 
of the milch cow and they, too, like the cow, are cursed with 
disease. 

Our government is responsible for the assertion that scarcely 
a single herd of dairy cows in a thousand is free from disease. 
No tuberculin test of any herd in New York, including the so- 
called "certified" herds, has failed for eight years to find tubercu- 
lous cows. They are in every herd, and in many herds every cow 
is affected. 

All animals have natural instincts to guide them in their selec- 
tion of food until they are caged, harnessed or put into a stall. 

The human animal possesses intelligence rather than instinct. 
His failure to exercise this intelligence is responsible for the 
thousand ills which his ignorance imposes upon innocent children. 

The divinely constituted truths, with which man should be fa- 
miliar, reveal to him, if he has the heart to face them, why some 
plump children are pale, why some pale children are thin, why 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 33 

some children with normal red blood haven't an ounce of useless 
fat upon their bodies. 

The weight of the child has little to do with its morals, but 
the poorly nourished child manifests many abnormal character- 
istics which wise people tell us are "evil." 

Many a little heart pumping impoverished blood to hungry 
tissues, feeding starved nerves with an unhealthy stream, nourish- 
ing a tired little body and a wearied little brain with debased foods 
goes for correction to the Children's Court, or is "punished" for 
the pranks over which it has no control. 

You have seen "bad" children, "cranky" children, "peevish" 
children, "cruel" children, "reckless" children, "nervous" children 
and "delinquent" children. Many of them, after a diet of six 
months on the food God intended they should eat, can preach ser- 
mons to their elders. 

The angels — perhaps they can weep — know this, yet the world 
disregards the most beautiful of nature's laws in its consumption 
of degraded, debased, denatured foods, and then murmurs against 
God, blaming Him for the prevalence of disease upon the earth. 

Food, of course, has nothing to do with man's natural in- 
clination to evil; nothing to do with the weakness of his will. 
Food will not confirm him in grace, but it will irritate and kill 
him, and before the end it will make those about him miserable, 
affording them ample opportunity to practise the heroic virtues 
of fortitude and patience. 

In the creation of our esthetic dishes there are constant wander- 
ings into fields far from nature's own. 

We need not consider the normal fish, the healthy monkey or 
the disease-resisting sheep. Let us consider instead the hundreds 
of thousands of cases of cured tuberculosis among men, women 
and children. Hope and faith are carried again on joyful backs, 
when victims of this preventable affliction return to nature, eat- 
ing the foods that re-create normal blood, providing anew re- 
sistance to disease, and vigour that had been lost. 

New red blood arrests disease, walls up tuberculous lesions, 
and the patient, if not in the very shadow of death, is reclaimed. 

New red blood depends on food, on food alone. 



34 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 7 — FOOD CALCIUM AND TUBERCULOSIS 

The worn out body suffering from low resistance and tubercu- 
losis can be cured. 

What, then, is society's justification for permitting tuberculosis 
to develop in a healthy body? 

Go to the morgue; witness the autopsies; ask a surgeon what 
causes the scars in the lungs and glands before you. 

He will tell you the scar is a healed wound, a calcified lesion. 

That dead body, while living, suffered tubercles to feed upon it, 
yet never suspecting their existence threw them off and was cured. 

Thousands of cases of accidentally renewed vitality overcoming 
the ravages of tuberculosis are on record. 

Physicians report their continued surprise in the number of 
instances of cured tuberculosis, evidence of which they find in 
operations or in post mortems among adults and children. 

Calcified lesions, completely walled off from the rest of the 
body, are common. They show how nature, when given an oppor- 
tunity to thwart the advance of the disease, performs her pro- 
tecting task without exciting the faintest suspicion that the disease 
is present. 

There is no combination of foods, if consumed as nature gives 
them to us, which can fail to fortify the growing child against the 
ravages of tuberculosis. All food, if unrefined, is good food. Let 
there be no mystery about that. Food, unprocessed by man, con- 
tains all the elements necessary to a successful journey through 
the human body. That God put them there for a purpose we shall 
prove. 

In nature there are no irritating tables of proteins, carbo- 
hydrates, fats or ash to vex the child. It is the breaking down of 
nature's schemes which over-emphasises the importance of these 
curious subdivisions into which man has learnedly split his dietary. 

Any combination of natural foods, unrefined, which you can 
think of, will place at her disposal the raw materials needed by 
Mother Nature not only in her process of curing tuberculosis, 
but in her function of protecting the body against it. 

In an earlier chapter we heard the Sixth International Con- 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 35 

gress of Physio-Therapy tell us that the lack of absorbable calcium 
salts in the diet favours loss of resisting power against infection. 

Remember those words, for as they zigzag their course through 
what is to follow they will gather many new meanings, every 
one of which will be as transparent to you as distilled water. 

Absorbable calcium salts (organic lime) constitute the build- 
ing materials employed by the body in plugging the tuberculous 
gap. With organic lime and its accompanying salts, furnished 
only through food and never through medicine, the body builds 
its fortification against tuberculosis. 

When the surgeon's knife cuts through a healed tuberculous 
area the effect is exactly like that which follows an attempt to 
cut sand. 

These calcified lesions complain of our folly in remaining deaf 
to the beautiful rhythms playing everywhere about us, reminding 
us constantly that in creating earth for man God in His wisdom 
neglected nothing, left nothing to chance, but rather from His 
infinite Providence provided for every human need, heeding not 
alone the requirements of the new born infant at its mother's 
breast, but also the requirements of the adult, if the adult will but 
bend his knee and bow his head, accepting without question the- 
dispensations of his Creator's love instead of capriciously breaking 
in upon them, disordering, changing, improving, refining, destroy- 
ing them. 

Pure food not only endows the child with disease-resisting 
vitality, but it promotes and controls its normal growth and de- 
velopment, and fortifies maternity against the many preventable 
evils that beset the sublimest episode of life. 

Pure food is designed to keep the cradle filled and to stand the 
grave off to its proper time. 

It is designed to carry its lesson to stricken Europe, whose 
under-nourished children, like our own, now need more attention 
than ever. 

It is designed to erase the horrible records of childhood mortal- 
ity and to substitute for them the cheering fruits of decent and 
humane consideration for the physically defective so frequently 
condemned to meaningless misery, and premature death. 

These chapters will trace the fortunate accident that even in 
ignorance sometimes removes the peg. 



36 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

They will locate that peg. They will reveal the operation of 
a beautiful and harmonious law. They will make plain the natural 
processes which, when applied, can be substituted for the accident 
that sometimes intercepts the journey of a useful creature on his 
way to untimely death. 

The proper place to teach the mysteries of food is in the 
school, but even we who were not taught there can begin now to 
learn with inevitable increase in the number of our days, and 
blessings untold to our children. 

The most indifferent of us know that chicken food must be 
food that will make chickens grow and keep them well. There is 
such food upon the market. 

Children's food must perform the same service for children, 
but there are hundreds of foods now on the market which chil- 
dren eat every day. These foods in six weeks will destroy the 
health of chickens, and in three months kill them. 

They do not cause children to topple over on the streets in 
paroxysms of pain. They do not bring about sudden death. They 
rob the child a little at a time, slowly but surely undermining its 
vitality and lowering its resistance until eventually it becomes 
the ready victim of any disease organism that may take up resi- 
dence in its tissues. 

The same law of building with building materials operates for 
children and chickens. 

Universities have not yet been able to suspend the law, though 
some of them have sought to change our notions regarding its 
divine origin. 



§ 8 — DENATURED FOODS DESTROY LIFE 

Animals, human or dumb brutes, die when their food is de- 
based, but the very number of such foods makes it impossible 
for an individual to go before a grand jury with the charge: 
"This food killed my little girl." 

For months, perhaps for years, one juggled food brought sub- 
stances to her diet which her little body could not use. Her 
vitality in throwing off the excess baggage was slowly sapped. 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 37 

She was not poisoned by any particular food. A combination 
of inadequate foods merely robbed her tissues of their tone. 

Another food from another source had been processed in a 
manner that removed some or all of its most indispensable ele- 
ments. In its refinement it withheld from her little frame the very 
materials she required for growth, materials that God had 
elaborated for her, but which unnatural practices had withdrawn 
from her reach on the vain assumption that it is not necessary to 
credit the Creator with a profoundly conceived and marvellously 
executed scheme of biochemic balances and harmonies. 

Persistently, month after month, the disordered combination 
of artificial foods sallied to the dinner table, where all the forces 
of outraged nature were called into battle with the unseen enemy 
of health and life. 

Commercial expediency looked on as the fight was waged with 
nature but nature had been equipped with poor fighting materials 
and the child's resistance, broken at last by the combined attack 
of unsuspected enemies, buckled, snapped and was gone. 

There is no pathologist, no public prosecutor, no father or 
mother who can accuse the food industry of her death. Let this 
be fully understood. 

Before we can correct a single refined food abuse, by law, we 
must produce in court the body of a dead child, and prove that 
life was destroyed by a particular food. 

Scientists will be on hand to testify in behalf of the defendant. 
Food manufacturers have been paying scientists for twenty-five 
years to testify in their defence. 

I have listened on hundreds of occasions to their testimony in 
adulterated food cases, and in many instances I have seen their 
sophistries fail, but the facts have rarely been reported to the 
public. 

The fear of advertising losses, as we have seen, has closed the 
columns of most newspapers and magazines to the truth. 

Judges, confused by the conflicting testimony of experts, have 
in numerous instances imposed fines of $5 upon wretches for pre- 
serving milk with formaldehyde; for salvaging the flesh of dis- 
eased animals for human food. 

Not a word of these heinous crimes or the travesty of justice 
which flows from them filters out to the public. 



38 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Cases in which deadly wood alcohol has formed the base of 
vanilla, lemon and other flavouring extracts have been dismissed 
with a suspended sentence, not a soul outside the court room hear- 
ing an echo of the facts. 

Confectioners who have used arsenical preparations in the 
glaze with which their penny candies were weather-proofed have 
been let off with trifling rebukes, and the public has been none the 
wiser. 

Foods that kill mice, rabbits and guinea pigs are not "harmful" 
to the child in the law's eyes, for the reason that nobody is will- 
ing to feed a child on an exclusive diet of such things until it dies, 
in order thereby to produce, as evidence, a dead body in court. 

Fortunately, when it is argued that chickens or other experi- 
mental animals are not human beings, and that therefore any 
deduction based on barnyard phenomena are unwarranted when 
applied to humanity, we are not confined to animal experimenta- 
tion for our facts. 

The same facts have been established in the most startling and 
dramatic fashion, hundreds of times, upon human beings. The 
fascinating narratives which these human poison squad experi- 
ences provide for our enlightenment and use will be related here 
in all their significances. Dramatists and novelists have strangely 
overlooked the intense human interest with which these weird 
episodes literally scintillate and thus the general public has never 
heard of them. 

In Billibid Prison, Philippine Islands, 1912, twenty-nine crim- 
inals under sentence of death were fed exclusively on refined 
and denatured foods of the kind most common in America for the 
purpose of determining the effect of such diet. 

Their chief food consisted of polished rice. In six weeks the 
condemned men became anemic. Their first symptom was slight 
edema (water-logging or swelling) of the feet and ankles which 
disappeared after lying down. Puffiness beneath the eyes, with 
general weakness and pains in the legs, soon followed. 

Later the edema became - massive, involving even the thighs. 
Then came marked apathy with muscular wasting and extreme 
pallor. Finally, an enlargement of the heart with feeble heart 
action. 

It is noteworthy that the symptoms pf war edema reported 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 39 

among German, French and British soldiers, 1916-1918, are 
identical with these. 

Commenting on the Billibid experiments, Drs. R. P. Strong 
and R. C. Crowell stated : "These diseases developed owing to 
the absence of some substance or substances in the diet necessary 
for the normal physiological processes of the body. Without a 
supply of such substances in the food sickness results." This 
comment in all its vagueness disclosed the poverty of food knowl- 
edge possessed by the medical profession six years ago. 

The prisoners fed on the denatured diet mingled freely with 
the other prisoners but there was no tendency of the disease to 
spread outside the group fed on the polished rice. 

When this denatured food was removed from their diet and 
whole natural brown rice restored to them, they recovered 
promptly. 

These are the brief outlines of facts of which you will learn 
much in striking detail before we have proceeded far. They are 
cited here only for the purpose of emphasising the ignorance 
existing as late as 19 12 among men who although devoting their 
lives to the cure of disease did not suspect its cause. 

In the near future, depending upon the rapidity with which 
the truth is spread, it will not be so difficult to bring the body of a 
dead child into the court room to prove with evidence that can- 
not be controverted that the murder was committed by depraved 
food. 



§ 9 — HUMAN VARIATIONS OF A DIVINE THEME 

Perhaps you have heard of the little girl who caught cold 
easily, and whose mother for that reason kept her home from 
school on rainy days. 

From the pages of "Starving America" published, 1913, by 
George H. Doran Company, of which work this is an elaborate 
extension, I again present her to you for the reason that she 
symbolises millions of her kind. 

She went one day to a playmate's birthday party at a neighbour's 
home. Set before the children was a great frosted cake with 
lighted candles; ice cream bricks striped with red, white, green 



40 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

and brown; candies of seven hues, and a riotous assortment of 
goodies that struggled with each other in a debauch of colour to 
catch the attention of greedy little eyes. 

The little merry-makers were transported by the rainbow 
sweets before them. Angel cake and wafers were consumed with- 
out end. 

That night the tired but happy little darling was tucked away in 
her warm little bed by little mother, who was happy too. 

In her sleep she fretted and tossed a bit. The next day she 
did not seem well enough to be sent to school. Toward evening 
a slight fever had developed. 

Her mother called it an "upset." 

The fever continued into the second day and the doctor was 
called. He felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and asked what 
she had been eating. 

When the party was described he smiled and said: "She has 
eaten too much." 

He gave her medicine and in a few days she was "well." 

The doctor had not taken into consideration the fact that the 
milk of which that richly decorated ice cream had been made was 
raw milk; he did not know that a microscopical examination of 
it would have revealed millions of organisms to the cubic centi- 
meter, much less than a teaspoonful. 

He did not attach much importance to the fact that many of 
those organisms were of the pathogenic or disease-producing type, 
and that the simple but effective remedy against them, pasteurisa- 
tion, had not been applied. 

He little heeded the fact that once infected, neither milk 
nor its products, ice cream and butter, are made safe by anything 
but pasteurisation or sterilisation. 

He did not recall that low temperature or even freezing has 
no effect on the disease germs of milk, and does not destroy the 
tuberculosis, typhoid and diphtheria bacilli, the highest exponents 
of milk-borne infection. 

He did not know that the ice cream, sent in from a store, was 
stiffened with a bodifier made of commercial gelatine, more truth- 
fully classified as carpenters' glue, which the Bureau of Chemistry 
at Washington has found to contain as many as 6,000,000,000 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 41 

organisms to the gram, of which there are twenty-nine in a 
single ounce. 

He did not know that glue, containing sulphites, copper and 
arsenic was originally intended as wall paper sizing, or for use 
in the paper box factory or furniture shop, but that through the 
cupidity of the wholesale bakers' supply houses it had been ap- 
propriated for use in confectionery, ice cream and cake. 

He did not know that the marshmallows consumed by the child 
consisted of glue, sugar and a coal tar dye. 

He did not know that the coloured candies were made chiefly 
of glucose, sweetened with 10 or 15 per cent, of sugar, flavoured 
with ethereal extracts and ornamented with ribbon dyes. 

He did not know that the soft drinks, pop, consumed by the 
child were sweetened with saccharine, contained soap bark for 
"suds," were coloured with dye, preserved with salicylic acid, 
benzoic acid or formic acid, and flavoured with esters, ethers and 
aldehydes. 

He did not know that small town "pop," as well as big city 
"pop," contains as a rule not a single ingredient recognised as 
food. 

He did not know the destructive action of refined glucose and 
refined sugars when excessively consumed. 

He did not know that on such a diet bees are quickly killed, 
though it has been generally supposed that an abundance of 
table syrup and granulated sugar is good food for the child. 

He had read something of the high calorie value of sugar, and 
glucose, but had not stopped to consider that alcohol and gasoline 
have a much higher calorie value. 

He did not know, as we are going to discover a little later, 
that "high calories" although a scientific phrase, is not only mean- 
ingless but dangerous when applied to food as it is being applied 
to-day. 

The little party as a single instance of childhood dissipation 
did no particular harm to its victim except perhaps to infect her 
through the ice cream with the germ of bovine tuberculosis, 
although every time she consumed a glass of raw milk of un- 
known origin at home she encountered the same danger. 

The significance of the little birthday party lay in the fact that 
all the delicacies served to the romping children were merely 



42 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

typical, under other forms, of the refined foods so generously in- 
corporated in the every day diet of the American people. 

We are to learn why our little girl caught cold so easily, and 
why it seemed difficult to cure those colds, and why she had so 
many periodical "upsets." 

Of what did her breakfast consist ? 

There was, of course, the usual coffee, which no child should 
ever consume, and the usual rolls, toast or pancakes with glucose 
syrup, with one of the many popular breakfast foods served with 
milk produced by cows fed on brewers' grain, beet pulp, distillery 
waste, cotton seed meal and gluten feed, a by-product of the 
glucose factory, compounded black strap feeds, containing ground 
corn cob, oat hulls, peanut shells, buckwheat hulls, cottonseed 
hulls, rice hulls, cocoa shells, chaff, elevator screenings, shredded 
straw, plant refuse, dirt and sand. 

"Is this not the breakfast of millions ?" you ask. 

Of what did the "breakfast-food" consist? 

Breakfast foods made of wheat, corn, barley and rice must 
"keep" ; they must "look nice." 

The corn flakes, the farina served under trade names in fancy 
packages at high prices but purchasable in bulk without the fancy 
names at half the price, and the puffed rice are merely other 
forms of angel cake and wafer without the sugar and eggs. 

They represent but the starchy part of the grain from which 
the many wonderful substances we are about to describe have 
been removed for commercial reasons. 

At noon, as father did not come home for lunch, mother fried 
the potatoes from last evening's meal, and perhaps added a bit 
of bologna in which in the uninspected establishments, of which 
there are thousands in the United States, the raw flesh of the re- 
jected dairy culls (old and diseased cows) is utilised. 

White bread and margarine, with syrup, were present in 
abundance. They were always present! ' 



§ 10 NATURAL IMMUNITY VERSUS BUSINESS 

Our little girl liked white bread or biscuits, deluged with 
table syrup, for lunch. Her mother did not know what life-sus- 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 43 

taining substances had been removed from the bread and the 
biscuits, or what had been taken out of the hydrolised corn starch 
that produced the syrup. 

She also liked jam purchased from the store, with its 10 per 
cent, of fruit and its 10 per cent, of apple juice, made from the 
sulphured skins and cores of the dried apple industry; with its 
70 per cent, of glucose, sweetened with 10 per cent, of sugar, 
held together with sufficient phosphoric acid to supply the jelly- 
ing quality, and preserved with the classic one-tenth of 1 per cent, 
of benzoate of soda to prevent the mass from disintegrating. 

You did not think such jam as this is to be found in America. 

Examine the fine print on the labels of the jars sold in the 
stores ; examine the fine print on the labels of the thirty-pound 
pails sold as "pie filler" and "cake filler" to the baker. More than 
70 per cent, of all the commercial jam consumed is exactly like 
this. 

Our little victim liked the bright strawberry hue of the sweetish 
stuff. This hue had been contributed through the legal use of a 
coal tar dye known as amranth. 

Only one-tenth of 1 per cent, of benzoate of soda was declared 
in fine print on the label, and her mother had never noticed even 
that. 

Before the war, when benzoate of soda did not cost $5 a pound, 
the presence of as much as five-tenths of 1 per cent, in many foods 
was determined by the Commissioner of Agriculture of the State 
of Georgia. The facts were reported to the state chemist in 
serial No. 56. 

To-day formic acid and other preservatives less costly are 
secretly employed. 

The little girl's doctor did not know this ; moreover he was not 
worried by the presence of a little benzoate in her jam. 

She was also fond of pickles, hardened in a bath of alum, the 
astringency of which prevents the softening of their tissues. 

Her father and mother had not been taught the chemistry of 
food in the schools, nor the relationship which refined food, 
juggled food, and drugged food might some day bear to their 
anemic child. 

The evening meal was well suited to the father's needs. It con- 
sisted of chops or pot roast or sausages or baked beans and ham, 



44 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

or liver and bacon, or kidney stew, with vegetables and a bakery 
pie, or a home-made pudding, white with corn starch and milk or 
brown with corn starch and chocolate, or pink with ribbon dye. 

The ever-present white bread and something that resembled 
butter was, of course, consumed in abundance. It was the aver- 
age American meal as you shall see from authority much higher 
than mine, government authority, and it is the average American 
meal with which we are concerned. 

During the afternoon a candy shop down the street received 
many of the pennies of the little girl. It had existence for the 
purpose of attracting those pennies. At least twenty-million such 
pennies are spent each day in the United States by school chil- 
dren. 

Thus she feasted between meals on dyed glucose and chemical 
flavours, with an occasional ice cream soda to add romance to her 
little life. 

Delicate always, anemic and "nervous," she had been treated 
by the family physician for tonsillitis, acute chorea and anemia. 
At the age of six she underwent an operation for adenoids. 
Every year among children there are more than 200,000 such 
operations in the United States. 

She had also taken a tonic of iron and manganese. Remember 
these words, "iron" and "manganese." 

On other occasions tonics of strychnia were prescribed. 

Her teeth, like those of millions of children, were decayed. 
Mother was anxious about her, and at times would say, "I won- 
der if we feed Helen properly?" But Aunt Jennie always 
answered, "Her ills are natural to childhood, and are to be ex- 
pected. The sooner she has them all the sooner she will be done 
with them." 

Moreover, the neighbours told mother that the less attention 
she paid to her child's food the better, because people who were 
always worrying about food had the toughest luck. Here and 
there a "plump" child was pointed out as a model of what eating 
"anything and everything" would produce. 

The neighbours did not know that water-logged tissues are 
frequently mistaken for plumpness, or that plumpness has nothing 
to do with muscle tone, with normal functioning of the glands, 
with vitality or resistance to disease. 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 45 

The neighbours did not know that the "plump" child, fed on 
"anything and everything," succumbs more quickly than the well- 
fed, muscular but thin child. 

Grandmothers and mothers had fed children for ages, and 
surely they must know a little about their business, so after all 
little Helen's mother felt that the child would eventually outgrow 
her poor health. "She just wasn't strong" but "would get strong." 
It was a comforting thought. 

A few weeks after the little party, as Helen was going home 
from school, she was caught in a rainstorm. Mother changed 
her clothes promptly upon her arrival and gave her hot lemonade. 

There was another fever and the doctor was called. When he 
came he uttered one word, "pneumonia." 

We now know, for the Census Director at Washington has told 
us, that every year in the United States 400,000 children under 
ten years of age are buried, as little Helen was buried. 

Such are the facts. They cannot be disputed. 

The apparent cause of the child's death was pneumonia; the 
real cause was malnutrition, followed by low resistance and in- 
ability to fight off the pneumococci. 

Man's methods of endowing his children with natural immunity 
unfortunately involve a side issue of "business expediency." 
God's methods disclose no such taint. By following the divine 
hints that lie at his feet man can still have his business without the 
tragedy on which it is built. 



§ 11 — THE NEGLECTED CHILD OF 1912 — THE SOLDIER OF 

1918 

We have learned with shocking surprise that in the last mortal- 
ity statistics issued by the Census Director at Washington, there 
were reported in the United States for one year the deaths of 
400,000 children under ten years of age. 

The record of these deaths was compiled in what is known as 
the "registration area," which included only about 65 per cent, of 
the total population of the United States. 

The total deaths in the "registration area" the year before the 



46 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

war, 1 91 3, were 890,848, of which all but 70,644 were of white 
persons. 

The "registration area" covered few Southern states in which 
the negro population is large. It is thus seen that the high mortal- 
ity record of the negroes has in no manner affected these figures, 
which would be still larger if the negro population were taken 
into consideration, or if the entire country were reported upon 
instead of but two-thirds of it. 

Lamenting the fatalities of war we are unmindful that during 
the past four years, while men on the battle-fields of Europe were 
being killed by fire and gas, 1,500,000 children under ten years of 
age were dying here at home in the United States. 

Because they did not die in a massacre, their deaths failed to 
rouse the nation. 

When the Titanic and the Lusitania went down with a few more 
than 2,000 souls aboard, the cities of civilization put on the cloak 
of grief. A few thousand perished, but they perished in a heap. 

In one instance a block of ice, in another an enemy was re- 
sponsible. 

Following both catastrophes every newspaper in the United 
States poured into the streets millions of first page lamentations. 
Men were dazed because these tragedies came quick and sudden. 

The slow-moving, deadlier peril that walks among their chil- 
dren by day and lies with them at night arouses no man. 

As long ago as 1912 the United States Bureau of Education 
prepared a bulletin warning us that here in our own peaceful cities 
of America 

400,000 children had organic heart disease. 

1,000,000 children had tuberculosis. 

1,000,000 children had spinal curvature. 

1,000,000 children had defective hearing. 

4,000,000 children were suffering from malnutrition. 

6,000,000 children had enlarged tonsils or other gland diseases. 

10,000,000 children had defective teeth. 

15,000,000 children needed attention for physical defects pre- 
judicial to health. 

Many of those children were then boys of fifteen. Since then 
they have passed through the medical examination of the draft 
of 1918. The defects of 1912 had become intensified during the 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 47 

interim. The re-examination of 1918 disclosed the nation's crime 
of neglect. 

Yes, the neglected child of 1912 presented himself for efficient 
military service in 1918. The nation that had ignored his perils in 
peace expected him in war to step into line with a whole body. 

Do you not think it time to ask the reason why these figures 
are on the books against us ? 

Do you not think it our duty to heed the truth and apply it ? 

To all who think so these words are addressed. 

We know in the last year reported by the Census Directory 
at Washington, 159,435 infants under one year of age perished 
in the United States. 

This sacrifice of infant life indicates that nearly 200,000 Ameri- 
can women annually enter the shadows of motherhood unfit to 
bring their children into the world. The facts are brutal, but 
by ignoring them or by refusing to look into them because of 
the grim depression which accompanies the contemplation of such 
a holocaust, we betray our unworthiness of the sacrifice made 
by our sons and brothers on the fields of France. 

They struggled and died to make the world a better place to 
live in. Shall we hesitate to match our living efforts against their 
blood? 

By seeking the cause of America's slaughter of the innocents, 
in order to act upon it, we prove that in some measure at least we 
are worthy to account for our stewardship of the lives submitted 
to our care. 

If, in 1918, a hostile army had invaded our shores to put to 
death 400,000 of our children as the Turks put to death the Ar- 
menians, as the Prussians put to death the Belgians, there would 
have been cause indeed for weeping and wailing and gnashing of 
teeth. 

That hostile army has invaded our shores, and is now ruthlessly 
destroying our children. It is the army of ignorance, indiffer- 
ence, complacency, selfishness, greed, materialism. 

The crowds in the market places, in the cars, on the streets, in 
the theatres ; the crowds scanning the casualty lists, hoping that 
the names of their loved ones would not be there, gave no thought 
even in the year of salvage, 1918, to the waste of life going on 
around them. 



48 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

"With desolation is the earth made desolate, because no man 
thinketh in his heart." 

Therefore we experience little indignation when self-appointed 
leaders declare an intolerance for what they describe as "mis- 
taken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a senti- 
mental belief in the sanctity of human life. Such is the phi- 
losophy of Madison Grant who holds that slaves are more fortu- 
nate than free men and the subjects of an aristocracy happier and 
better than the citizens of a democracy. 

These anti-American doctrines are advanced boldly by the 
councillor of the American Geographical Society and a trustee of 
the American Museum of Natural History in his "The Passing of 
the Great Race," published, 1916. 

From such doctrines what shall America expect? 



§ 12 — WHAT OUR TEETH DISCLOSE 

Although more than 100,000 deaths from tuberculosis are 
reported in the United States every year, these figures represent 
only the number who perish, not the number afflicted or incapaci- 
tated. 

In the last year reported, covering but two-thirds of the popu- 
lation, 58,973 died of diarrhoea. This number does not include 
those who were stricken during the year and recovered. 

Indicating fatal cases it also discloses the wide prevalence of 
dietetic folly in non-fatal cases. 

Cancer, rapidly increasing, was responsible for 49,928 deaths. 
The American Society for the Control of Cancer through Dr. 
Charles E. Lakeman, reported in 1915 that we then had 80,000 
new cases each year in the United States. 

Bright's disease, also increasing, with acute nephritis, was re- 
sponsible for 65,106 deaths. 

Cancer and Bright's disease, both of which are now being 
traced to food abuses, in one year were responsible for 135,034 
deaths, leaving hundreds of thousands of victims in the valley 
straddled by lingering death. 

Diabetes also is on the increase. 



i M'l " ft 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 49 

Before abandoning these facts established by the Census Di- 
rector at Washington, let us consider two diseases — cancer of 
the stomach and heart disease — both of which take a progressively 
heavier toll every year. 

The rate for 1913 was the highest for any year during the 
period dating from 1900, just as the rate for 1912 was the highest 
shown for any previous year. The rate for 19 17 shows a steady 
and continuous climb, and thus far in the mortality statistics kept 
by the City of New York for 1918, the increase actually smudges 
the chart on which it is recorded. 

The Census Director declares: "It is probable that many 
deaths reported as due to 'tumour' are in reality caused by cancer, 
but as far as the cancer total is concerned they are not included/' 

When this fact is considered with the fact that the "registration 
area" comprises only 65.1 per cent, of the total population, it is 
evident that we have in the United States a great many more 
cases of fatal cancer than are disclosed. 

The Census Director continues: "Approximately 40 per 
cent, of all deaths from this disease were returned as cancer of 
the stomach and liver." 

These facts tend strongly to support the convictions of Packard 
to the effect that refined and demineralised foodstuffs are di- 
rectly responsible for the prevalence of cancer. 

Of the 87,755 deaths charged to organic diseases of the heart, 
the Census Director states : "The tendency has been toward in- 
crease in the death rates from heart disease from year to year, 
and the rates for the latter years are well in excess of those of 
earlier years." 

It will be well to remember that in all disorders of nutrition 
involvement of the heart is among the first symptoms. Acidosis 
and anemia which are widespread but notoriously neglected food 
deficiency diseases, are always accompanied by abnormal heart 
action, the true cause of which is rarely suspected, and still more 
rarely reckoned with. <*""*X 

The extraordinary facts about to be presented all tend to prove A 
that cancer, Bright's disease, acute nephritis, diabetes, tuberculosis 
and organic diseases of the heart are directly attributable to food j 
deficiencies in a land that literally overflows with an abundance/ 
of food of a kind that supplies all these deficiencies. 



50 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Of course, when 400,000 children under ten years of age die 
in their American homes every year there is an involvement of the 
living who still maintain that minimum of vitality necessary to 
hold them this side the dead line. 

We need not speculate as to the prevalence of disease and 
pain. All over America and Europe public school children are 
being examined by physicians in search of disease. 

Half the children in a school in Leeds were found by Dr. Hull 
suffering from mineral starvation. Their food had been refined. 

Before the war 40 per cent, of the children in the Edinburgh 
schools were found suffering from diseases of the ear. 

Of 10,500 school children examined, the British Dental Associa- 
tion found 86 per cent, suffering from defective teeth, the result 
of a diet lacking in the mineral substances upon which bones, 
teeth and tissues depend. 

Those who refuse to accept this fact must deal with the re- 
sults of the experiments of Dr. Geis of Columbia University in 
his analysis of the mineral content of defective teeth. 

In the Dundee school 50 per cent, of the children were found 
suffering from defective vision. Of 42,750 children examined 
in 191 1 by Dr. William J. Garvin, chief of the Division of Child 
Hygiene of the Boston Board of Health, 27,795 were described 
as "defective." 

Of 1,694 children examined in six clinics, 1913, by Dr. A. 
Freedman Foot, eleven were found to possess normal teeth. Dr. 
Foot, in reporting to the Second District Dental Society of New 
York, declares : "The six-year molars of nearly every child were 
broken down wholly or in part. In many instances the molars 
were decayed through the gums. So extensive and far advanced 
were the defects that corrective treatment, even if it were applied, 
would have been of little value.'' 

The New York Department of Health through Dr. T. Van 
Wincke examining the teeth of 231,081 school children of New 
York City, outside the dental clinics, found 131,747 defective. 

What are the future health chances of these children? Are 
they to be useful to society or a drag upon the race? Will we 
need them for war in 1925 ? 

If they really constitute our second line of defence, what are 
we doing to protect that line? 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 51 

Full proof is at hand establishing the incontrovertible propo- 
sition that defective teeth or sound teeth may be had at will, de- 
pending entirely upon the character of food consumed prior to 
and during the entire period of dentition. 

The same character of* proof is at hand determining the fact 
that defective teeth constitute but one of the many symptoms 
of the grave systemic disorders traceable to refined food. 

The American teeth of to-day are among the poorest on earth 
in spite of the great variety of foods which the American people 
enjoy. 

"No nation was ever so well fed as America." 

Alas! such flattery does not compensate for the infirmities so 
wilfully ignored. Flattery is a poor substitute for the riches God 
has provided for His children. Those riches are within reach. 
They are abundant. Our hands will soon be upon them. 



§ 13 — WHY HAVE A SIX- YEAR MOLAR? 

Sound teeth are the foundation of health building. The six- 
year molar is the corner-stone. The school children of America 
are building upon defective corner-stones or without corner- 
stones at all. 

Why should God provide the six-year molar if He did not in- 
tend His creature to use it? 

A hundred eminent authorities whose brilliant demonstrations 
have never been heard of by the plain people now stand on record 
with these statements : "Defective teeth are symptoms of mal- 
nutrition. They indicate that something is wrong with the food 
supply. The normally nourished possess sound teeth." 

Notwithstanding the profound truth nested in this little cluster 
of words, no symptom of the national health is so grossly 
neglected as the symptom revealed by defective teeth, even in 
the face of overwhelming evidence of the soundness of the 
prophecy that if we persist in ignoring the underlying causes 
of these defects, America, in spite of the magnificence of her 1918 
performances, is destined in 1948 to become a decadent nation. 

In June, 1914, Dr. S. S, Goldwater, Commissioner of Health 



52 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of New York City, ordered a physical examination of the em- 
ployes of the Health Department. 

Between June and October 240 men and 456 women employes 
were examined. These 696 individuals represented the average 
standard of American citizenship. Perhaps because of their edu- 
cation and environment they represented a standard a little higher 
than the average. At least they should have. 

They were specialists in the kind of health-education which the 
American people now enjoy. As such they should have known 
something about their own health. 

The average age of the men examined was thirty-three and 
one-half years; the average age of the women thirty-two years. 

From the Department labourer to the highest executive officer, 
a variety of indoor, outdoor and mixed employment was repre- 
sented. 

The report of the examination declares: "One hundred and 
twenty-three were found to have defective digestion. Habitual 
constipation was found in the majority of these. 

"A great number of young men (notwithstanding their highly 
polished shoes, carefully creased trousers, bright neckties and 
clean-shaven faces) suffered from this condition, which if allowed 
to go uninterrupted has baneful ultimate effects upon the blood 
vessels, kidneys, heart and nervous system." 

In addition to constipation the cause of a hundred other pre- 
ventable ills, 417 of the entire number suffered from defective 
vision, defective hearing and defective teeth. Ninety-two had 
heart disease. Many of these had valvular leakage of which they 
were entirely ignorant. 

They had not died as infants, and they looked like healthy 
creatures, but within them the forces of destruction were work- 
ing unseen and unsuspected. 

Others, especially very young men with constipation and nerv- 
ousness, had dilated left ventricles with unstable and rapid heart 
action. They were a fine, healthy, average looking lot, judged 
from the outside, and would seem to justify the comforting flat- 
tery of the average commentator upon the glory of American 
public health: "We are the best fed nation in the world." 

Just such deceptive judgment calculating from the exterior 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 53 

only has inspired many American editors to idealise the "superb 
health" of their fellows. 

Were it not for this dangerous attitude toward truth these 
symptoms would long ago have been interpreted in their true 
significance, and an honest effort might have been made to provide 
against them. 

Self-flattery has blinded the nation, but the hundreds of thou- 
sands of "rejects" cast aside as "physically unfit" in the medical 
examination of our first draft of 1918 have opened the nation's 
eyes. 

Of our 696 Health Department employes, 232 or exactly one- 
third were in obvious need of medical treatment, and 327 — 44 
per cent. — were in need of medical advice. 

Their diet had not saved them from the infirmities with which 
they were specialising, even though they had not been included 
among the 400,000 who as little children succumb every year 
in the United States to an untimely death. 

Commenting on the Goldwater report, Dr. Charles D. Slade, 
who made the examinations, stated: "Forty- four per cent, of 
those examined had without their knowledge some vital physical 
defect which might have shortened their life by a number of years 
if undetected. 

"Those in whom were discovered actual evidence of disease 
numbered 213 or nearly one-third the entire number." 

There was not much self -justification for self -flattery there. 

As we advance we shall discover less, but always shall we keep 
in mind the simple, acceptable, never-failing and truly divine 
formula, the abandonment of which is responsible for so much 
human infirmity, and the return to which means so much not only 
to America, but to that great part of the civilised world which 
believes in God and trusts Him. 



§ 14 — "dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt 

return" 

"Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return" is a law of 
life, not a symbol of death. 
Dr. Slade, continuing his comments upon the disquieting results 



54 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of the examination of the health of the employes of the New 
York Department of Health, said : "The last ten years have 
recorded a general reduction in the general death rate in all ages 
under forty years, but there has been a simultaneous surprising 
increase in the death rate between forty and sixty years, due 
largely to digestive, circulatory and kidney diseases." 

Back in 1898 New York City had an infant death rate, under 
one year of age, of 203 for every thousand born. 

Heroic efforts to save these lives through the establishment of 
pasteurisation of milk, infant feeding stations and the work of 
visiting nurses had succeeded in reducing this death rate at the 
beginning of 1918 to 89 per thousand, a saving of 114 infant lives 
in every thousand born. 

In 1917 the metropolis reported 141,564 births. In that year 
16,139 baby lives were prolonged beyond the first year stage, 
after which little, if anything, was done for them. 

The city "saved" them, glorified its records accordingly, and 
went about its business, giving no thought to their second year, 
their fifth year, their tenth year. Now it is focusing attention 
upon their fortieth year. 

What kind of a system is it that will prolong the misery of frail 
little lives for a year and then pause in its work of redemption? 
It were better, perhaps, if the babies were allowed to die than to 
extend their miseries into unknown regions out of which they 
finally emerge with infirmities that cause them to curse the day 
they were snatched from the "infant mortality" class and flung 
into the "physically defective" class. 

It were better far for us in our relations with God that we 
make no attempt to drag out the infirm lives of these weaklings 
of society unless we continue our work of restoring them to 
healthy, fruitful life. 

Something of the truly inspiring experiences I have had in 
the physical redemption of broken boys who had been rescued 
from the "infant mortality" class will be related here in good 
season. 

Certain it is that all childhood infirmities lower efficiency, for 
which reason public school boards are ordering operations upon 
children's throats, removing adenoids, correcting defective vision, 
doing dental work, providing nurses, furnishing meals at cost, 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 55 

sending "cards of instruction" on hygiene and diet to parents. 

The charge for these services is borne by the community. 

Apparently if the work were not done under school direction 
it would not be done at all. 

The state exercises vast and elastic powers in the regulation of 
public health and education. Why does the state make no at- 
tempt to search out the cause of the diseases with which it deals ? 
Why does the state not warn the people against the hidden enemy 
that attacks them? 

Let me again repeat : the politicians, the food industries and the 
newspapers will not permit it. 

Wherefore, it is the purpose of these words to set down a 
record of those common but deadly sins of diet which end in- 
evitably in disease. 

We shall have to review the nation's crimes against its wheat, 
corn, rye, rice and barley; against its bread, biscuits, crackers, 
cakes, rolls, rings, buns, wafers, doughnuts, crullers, pastry, pies, 
pancakes, puddings, sugars and starches ; against its milk, butter, 
eggs, meat products, fish, poultry ; against its molasses, dried 
fruits, condiments, candies, ice cream, jam, jellies and preserves. 
All of these foods could be and would be what they ought to be 
if we refused to tolerate the manipulation of the substitutes that 
go into them. 

We shall tear down nothing without building up. When we 
are through it will be impossible to go astray in the selection and 
preparation of the most delicious, appetising and nutritious of 
foods for our families unless we wilfully decide to do so. 

"Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." 

If we take a handful of fertile earth into the laboratory and 
split it into its component parts we find it composed chiefly of 
some sixteen elements. 

If we take a measure of milk, an egg, a handful of wheat or 
corn, barley, oats or rye, again we find the same sixteen elements, 
plus at least two marvellous compounds elaborated by the plant, 
though not in the soil. 

These compounds were not known in the modern laboratory 
until a few years ago, yet Moses proved by his instructions to the 
Jews that he was familiar with them. 

They are called "fat soluble A" and "water soluble B." With- 



56 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

out them man cannot live, yet he makes an almost fanatical effort, 
for business reasons, to keep them out of his diet, and succeeds 
in doing so in at least 80 per cent, of all the foods he eats. From 
his bread he succeeds in removing them entirely, depending 
solely upon benevolent chance to obtain them from "offsetting" 
foods about which he hears so much when he reads the reports 
of commercial scientists. 

When we analyse the body of man we find that it, too, is made 
up principally of the same sixteen elements found in the soil 
and the plant. There is no creature alive on the face of this 
planet whose body does not contain these sixteen elements. 

The constancy with which they appear in the soil, in the tissues 
of the plant and in man's own tissues, and the consistency with 
which they are found in all unrefined foods reveal the operation 
of a fixed and inviolable law. 

The beauty of this law, as we are about to see, is almost as 
infinite as the Creator who set its processes in motion. The 
lore of the libraries contains nothing so bewildering in its fasci- 
nation, and yet one may consult a million volumes and find no 
hint of its glory upon their pages. 

The elements which operate under this law and which persist 
through fertile soil, healthy plants and man are oxygen, nitrogen, 
hydrogen, carbon, chlorine, fluorine, iron, phosphorus, calcium, 
potassium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, sulphur, silicon, 
iodine. There are nearly a hundred from which nature might 
choose but she clings tenaciously to these. 

The human body obtains them through the medium of food, 
and through food alone. 

From all the food refined for the use of the human body at 
least eight of them are removed entirely, and four others are re- 
moved to the extent of 75 per cent. 

In this clash with God and in all the miseries that flow from 
it we shall find the very heart of the marvels about to be un- 
folded. 

Penetrating the circles of elemental nature for a few brief 
hours even the indifferent and the sceptical will behold an invin- 
cible defence against the deaths of the 400,000 children under ten 
years of age who perish in the United States every year ; against 
the nameless pain that remains behind. 



THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 57 

The disclosures of the War Department, July 27th, 1918, by 
Provost Marshal General E. H. Crowder are to be remembered 
as we enter the depths. The War Department's estimate of 
effectives obtainable by extending the draft ages from 18 to 45 
confirm in startling figures all the facts thus far presented as 
to the number of physical defectives in the United States. 

Of the 1,366,142 men available between the ages of 32 and 45 
nearly 450,000 (435,378) are grouped as "physical rejects/' leav- 
ing 601,236 men fit for service. 

Of the 2,568,012 men available between the ages of 18 and 22 
nearly 800,000 (770,403) are grouped as "physical rejects," leav- 
ing 1,797,609 men fit for service. 

Here, then, are 2,568,012 mere boys of whom nearly a third 
have been broken on the wheel of infirmity, a number agreeing 
in depressing consistency with the averages adduced in all the 
other instances cited here. 

Why should such appalling numbers of American youth, under 
standards of living for which so much is claimed, fall at their 
tender age into the "physically unfit" class ? 

And here are 1,036,614 men in their very prime, in the very 
flower of ripening manhood, of whom 42 per cent., nearly half, 
have been blasted at the core. 

In these two classes alone our War Department from a total of 
3,604,626 weeds out at a time when stern necessity inspires less 
rigid physical examination, a full third (1,205,781) and casts them 
off. Most of these rejected men were ready to die if need be 
for the land they love, but a loved land has little use in time of 
war for the mere readiness of her sons. In peace they may 
decay and still be classified as men, but when the cannon roars 
it is not readiness, but fitness, that makes a man. 



TWO: TWO KINDS OF FOOD: 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE— THE DESTRUCTIVE 



TWO: TWO KINDS OF FOOD: THE CONSTRUCTIVE— 

THE DESTRUCTIVE 

§ 15 — MORE PRECIOUS THAN SILVER AND GOLD 

The despised minerals of the soil with their mysterious com- 
panions, the "vitamines," which are always automatically re- 
moved from food when the minerals are removed, control all 
vegetable and animal life. More precious than silver and gold, 
these commonplace constituents of food are rejected. 

Notwithstanding the formidable names by which they are 
known, they are found in the commonest of earth that will pro- 
duce vegetation; in the grasses and seeds of grasses that spring 
from that earth; in the most familiar living things that feed 
upon those grasses and their seeds. 

As we consume them every day and are not disturbed by 
their presence or absence in the dining room, we shall have 
little difficulty in following them in spite of their awe-inspiring 
names. What we want to know is just how they affect our lives, 
and how our interference with them results in disease and death. 

All the mineral salts work in beautiful co-operation with each 
other. They teach us that in nature nothing is independent. 
They reveal the essential interdependence existing among all God's 
creatures, among even the inert elements that have sprung from 
His hands. 

Without phosphorus, for instance, all the other soil elements are 
worthless, even though present in abundance. 

The science that treats of the life and health of the soil is 
so conscious of this phenomenon that it has influenced legislation, 
requiring the fertiliser manufacturer to state in specific terms 
the exact quantity of the available phosphorus which his com- 
merical product contains. 

The soil obtains nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon from 
the air and the rain. 

It finds its potassium and other mineral elements through the 

61 



62 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

erosion of rock, but the quantity of phosphorus in the mines 
and in the land is so easily estimated and so very limited, be- 
cause there is no known substitute for it, that man is ever on 
the alert for a new supply. 

The upper crust of the earth, known as soil, averages from six to 
twelve inches in depth. This thin film of earth containing the 
vitalising mineral elements that give us all our vegetation is 
the cradle of the world. It is the dust from which the bodies 
of men are organised. 

The first seven or eight inches of the virgin top soil of an acre 
of land weigh about 2,000,000 pounds. In this top soil there 
are only about 2,000 pounds of phosphorus. 

Thus we glimpse a little of the wonderful function it performs 
in combining with the other elements that support and control 
life. One little part of phosphorus in a thousand parts of earth. 
Think of it! 

Nature's most profound laws are qualitative, not quantitative. 
Phosphorus, in harmonious activity with all the other mineral 
salts of the soil, means normal crops, means health, buoyancy 
and vigour in the animal life that feeds upon those crops. 

Absence of phosphorus means soil starvation, loss of vegetable 
and animal vitality. 

Agricultural science knows that this subtle substance must 
not be removed from the soil if we do not wish the end to come. 

All the gold and silver and precious stones of the mines, all 
the piteous cries of starving multitudes cannot re-create this 
mysterious compounder of life. So science warns us against 
our prodigality and tells us that if we wantonly destroy it or 
remove it from the earth or take it out of our food we must 
pay the price in disaster. That, nevertheless, is exactly what 
we do. 

Yet we must remember that phosphorus is only one of the 
mineral elements without which life on the surface of the earth 
would become extinct. 

It is only because the available supply of phosphorus is so 
small that it possesses picturesque significance as an illustration 
of the necessity of minerals not only in the land, in the vege- 
table, fruit and grain which the land yields, but also in the life 
processes of man and animal. 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 63 

Iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, sulphur, 
silicon, chlorine, fluorine and iodine are just as important as 
phosphorus, no more so, no less so. 

When we remove any one of them from the earth we produce 
soil sickness, and the fruits of that soil are correspondingly- 
dwarfed, enfeebled, or do not appear at all. 

"Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return," is indeed 
a profound utterance, containing many lessons which the Twen- 
tieth Century has been too busy, too materialistic, to heed. 

That grim annual parade of 400,000 children under ten years 
of age, with which the "four-foot graves" of the United States 
are filled, would not be possible if human intelligence, guided 
by faith in the benevolent dispensations of God's providence, 
were to heed for one serious hour, on a nation-wide scale, the 
gravity of its slothful indifference to the laws of life. 

We are now about to see why whole grains, finely ground, 
containing all the mineral salts and vitamines with which God 
has endowed them, should replace in our diet not only for their 
superior flavour, but for what they mean to life and health, the 
refined, sifted and bolted cereals and breadstuffs upon which we 
feed; why every ripe fruit that grows should be popularised 
in the home; why vegetables and greens should receive ten-fold 
the attention they now enjoy; why the waters in which vegetables 
are cooked should not be discarded, but rather why they should be 
served in the form of soups or sauces ; why less meat and more 
milk should be consumed; why all meat should be sterilised 
and all milk pasteurised ; why butter is superior to all other forms 
of vegetable or animal fats and why it too, as well as ice cream, 
should be pasteurised; why milk and meat should not be con- 
sumed at the same meal, and why young children should not 
eat meat at all; why meat should always be accompanied by an 
abundance of vegetables, and why no child or adult should pass 
a single day without consuming fruit in some form, even though 
it be but dried fruit such as raisins, dates, figs, prunes, dried 
apples, apricots or peaches, and why sun-dried fruits should 
replace the sulphur-dried product of the market place; what 
eggs mean to the diet, and how to prepare for home use the 
unrefined grains in all their delicious combinations of whole 
meal breads, muffins, biscuits, cakes, porridges and puddings 



64 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

to which they so marvellously lend themselves not only at home, 
but in the restaurant; why refined sugars such as granulated 
cane sugar and beet sugar, glucose syrups and candies should 
be consumed in ever lessening quantities ; why the natural sugars 
such as unsulphured brown sugar, old-fashioned cane syrup, 
molasses, old-fashioned sorghum, old-fashioned maple syrup 
and honey should be consumed instead ; why baking powders 
should be sparingly used ; why artificial colours, chemical preser- 
vatives and chemical adjuncts such as sulphites, alum, saccharine, 
sodium benzoate and the whole coal tar scheme should be rejected. 
Behind this general proposition rests a structure of corporal 
and spiritual beauty, the form and substance of which although 
bequeathed to us through the wisdom of Moses, would still have 
to be accepted on faith, were it not for the revelations of modern 
science itself. 



§ 16 — THE INFLUENCE OF EARTH SALTS ON LIFE 

Dr. J. Reynolds Green, Cambridge, has demonstrated that 
even in the life of the plant the mineral salts play many parts, 
and are necessary for the assimilation of the food of protoplasm. 

Protoplasm is the soul and essence, the vital, growth-control- 
ling, life-maintaining material of the vegetable and animal cell. 

A new school of scientific experts has juggled with proto- 
plasm, and from it coined the mystifying phrase "vitamines," 
subordinating, even dismissing, under the one-sided enthusiasm 
of its erudition, the simpler but none the less indispensable 
elements without which protoplasm, vitamines, the "fat soluble 
A," the "water soluble B," or any other component of life-sup- 
porting food cannot exist. 

The purpose of these words is not to clutter up the mind of 
the reader with a hodge-podge of scientific terms, but rather 
to demonstrate the exquisite simplicity of what now, to the plain 
people, appears to be the most baffling and perplexing of riddles. 

Here and there the employment of scientific terms becomes 
essential. However, we need not be afrighted in their presence, 
for they are the crutches upon which we shall hobble into light 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 65 

and our journey without them would be slow indeed. So much 
for that. 

Now for the work we have undertaken. 

PfefTer, in his many experiments, demonstrated the impor- 
tance of mineral salts to the growth of plants which, unlike the 
animal, have the power of utilising mineral food as it exists 
in the ground. The plant can make its own vitamines. Man 
cannot. 

We shall make no statements without fortifying them by facts, 
hence the reference to Pfeffer and others who shall step on our 
little stage hereafter. 

Pfeffer made a solution of water, iron oxide, calcium nitrate, 
potassium nitrate, magnesium sulphate, potassium acid phos- 
phate and potassium chloride. Into this solution he put buck- 
wheat to grow. He also made other solutions from each of which 
he omitted one or more of the mineral salts, in order to determine 
what effect such omission would have upon the development 
of the plant. 

Through these experiments he proved that the plant, deprived 
of any of the minerals mentioned, is affected at once injuriously. 
He proved that in the absence of iron the development of chlo- 
rophyl does not take place. 

Chlorophyl is the green colouring matter of the plant, and 
corresponds with hemoglobin, the red colouring matter of the 
blood. Without chlorophyl there can be no vegetable life, as 
without hemoglobin there can be no animal life. Both depend 
on iron for their existence. 

He proved conclusively that in the absence of iron faulty 
nutrition is at once set up. 

In five glass jars employed by him it was easily seen just how 
the growth of the plants is affected by depriving them of any 
of the mineral salts so necessary to their existence. 

These food minerals of plants can be divided into four groups, 
each of which serves a different purpose. 

In the first group are found sulphur and phosphorus. All 
analyses of proteins, the fibre of meat, the albumen of egg, the 
gluten of wheat, the casein of milk, show that sulphur and phos- 
phorus are essential constituents of them. As proteins are im- 
mediately utilised in the construction of protoplasm, it can be 



66 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

seen that these salts are contained in every living substance. 

The second group comprises potassium, magnesium, calcium 
and iron, all of which have been conclusively demonstrated to 
be essential to the development of the plant. 

The third group consists of sodium, silicon, manganese, chlo- 
rine and iodine, without which no plant can grow. 

In the fourth group is found fluorine, which performs a won- 
derful function in all plant and animal life. 

In plant life it has been shown that potassium is directly con- 
nected with the construction of sugars and starches, but in just 
what way is not clearly known. 

Potassium occurs most frequently in the organs in which the 
formation and storage of sugars and starches are most actively 
carried on, such as in the leaves and tubers. 

It has been shown that magnesium has a distribution much 
like that of potassium, and that calcium is essential to the health 
of all green plants. One of its functions clearly established is 
its activity in neutralising oxalic acid, a poison elaborated in 
the nutritional processes of vegetables, and therefore finding its 
way into animal life. 

When we compare the influence of potassium, sodium and 
calcium on the development and growth of plants we find the 
presence of potassium leads to the development of stems, flowers 
and fruits, or to what may be regarded as the maturing of the 
plant, while in the absence of potassium the growth of the leaves 
is more directly favoured, the crop remaining backward and im- 
mature. The fruit does not develop! 

It has also been established that the nitrogen so essential to 
the life of animal and plant is combined with the mineral salts 
of the soil in the form of nitric acid. 

The minerals are thus taken up from the soil not only for 
their own sake in the performing of many functions in life's 
processes, but also for the sake of the nitrogen which they 
carry to the plant. In other words, they are nitrogen carriers 
as well as oxygen and carbon carriers. 

Oats mature less fully and completely in the absence of sili- 
con, thus establishing evidence of its aid in the metabolism of 
the plant. 

Until quite recently little was known of manganese as a con- 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 67 

stituent of many plants, but it has now been determined that 
manganese exerts a powerful influence on various oxidative pro- 
cesses carried out by a somewhat widely spread enzyme known as 
laccase. 

A curious phenomenon connected with these facts stands 
forth when we consider that many of the food minerals even in 
moderately dilute solutions are extremely poisonous, yet when 
nature finishes her mysterious work of manipulating, combining 
and compounding them, they are not only not poisonous, but 
actually benevolent in their effect upon plant and animal. 

Potassium in its pure state is a deadly poison, yet in its ab- 
sence the degree of development of the plant is limited. 

When the effects of such deficiency are so well marked even 
in the case of plants, how reckless is man when he permits the 
food of his children through entirely unnecessary, useless and 
vainglorious processes to be deprived not only of their potas- 
sium salts, but also of every one of the other mineral salts which 
we are beginning now to see in their true significance ! What 
effect upon the vigour of American childhood and manhood, con- 
sidered apart from the deaths every year of 400,000 children 
under ten years of age, is exerted by the removal of these food 
minerals from our national diet? 

We shall see. 



§ 17 — OLD AT TWENTY-FIVE — YOUNG AT SIXTY 

When sufficient potassium is present in the food of the plant 
its sugars and starches are produced in greater quantities. The 
plant itself moves on normally to maturing and the formation 
of its flowers, and subsequently of its seeds, follows without 
interruption. 

The composition of the soil determines largely the character 
of the development of the plant, exerting a vast influence upon 
the variety of the species, the different individuals of which are 
influenced accordingly. The same food influence is seen in 
operation in the development of the heavy bones of the truck 



68 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

horse and the fine bones of the race horse, in the development of 
the queen bee and the worker bee. 

Ethnologists who write so dogmatically upon the creation of 
man, drawing preposterous conclusions from the long heads 
and long bodies of the Nordics, the round heads and sturdy 
bodies of the Alpines, and the "disharmonic combinations ,, of 
Nordic and Mediterranean mixtures would be less aggressive in 
their journeys into the blurred and misty past, less sure of their 
assumptions if they included food in their tortuous speculations. 

Their sneering references to Genesis and their contemptuous 
disposition of Adam, mask, in the name of wisdom, a depth of 
ignorance which only the highest arts of camouflage can conceal. 
The composition of the food of man largely determines the 
character of the development of himself and his children, exer- 
cising the same vast influence upon the physical characteristics 
of his offspring as are exercised by soil food on the plant, and 
by plant food on the horse. 

The ethnologist who laughs at this has never bred, broke nor 
trained a race horse, nor has he ever heard of the influence of 
pellagra, a food deficiency disease, upon "the poor white trash" 
of the South, nor has he ever fed four generations of chickens 
on meat, but more of this later. 

It has been conclusively established that in the absence or 
through the deficiency of this or that food mineral others may 
be absorbed in unnatural proportions and combinations. This is 
one of the most alarming arguments against manipulation of 
these minerals, whereby some are removed entirely, leaving 
others in proportions altogether out of harmony with nature's 
formula. 

We do not know in what manner certain minerals are de- 
posited in the arteries, but we do know that the hardening of 
the arteries, brought about by these deposits, is the chief cause 
of old age. A man may be old at twenty-five or young at sixty, 
depending upon the condition of his arteries. Over this phe- 
nomenon the ethnologist blindly leaps. 

There is much evidence of which the ethnologist has never 
heard, to support the belief that man's disregard of the mean- 
ing and significance of the natural proportions of food minerals 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 69 

as they are elaborated by Mother Nature is responsible for the 
abnormal growth of many organs and glands; responsible in 
a particular manner for the growth of morbid cells found in 
all tumours and cancers. 

Packard's illumination of this subject is destined to shine 
through the centuries. 

We know what happens, for instance, when the thyroid gland 
is deprived of its iodine, and we know how the enfeebled thyroid 
affects the rest of the body. Just as a handful of fertile earth, 
a measure of wheat, a pint of milk, and the flesh of an animal 
each contain the salts of the earth, so the blood, the gastric 
juice, the pancreatic juice, the saliva, the bile and all the other 
internal secretions of the body are composed chiefly of mineral 
salts in solution. 

We need only glance over the following analyses made many 
years ago, but to-day as true as when they first came from the 
laboratory, in order to see how these internal secretions con- 
tain a constant minimum of these salts. 

Analysis of saliva by Frerichs, Berzelius, and Hammerbacher, 
calculated for 1,000 parts by weight of mineral salts. 



Frerichs 

Water 994.1 

Total solids 5.9 

Minerals 2.19 

Potassium 457-2 

Sodium 95.9 

Iron oxide 50.11 

Magnesium oxide 1.55 

Sulphur 63.8 

Phosphorus 188.48 

Chlorine 183.52 



Analysis of mineral salts of blood serum by Cavazzani calcu- 
lated on 100 parts of fluid. 

Potassium oxide 0.387 

Sodium oxide 4.290 

Chlorine 3.565 

Calcium oxide 0.155 

JVJagnesium oxide 0.101 



Berzelius 


Hammerbacher. 


992.9 
7-1 


994-2 
5-8 


1.9 


2..2. 



70 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Analysis of mineral salts of red corpuscles by C. Schmidt 
calculated on ioo parts of the moist corpuscles. 

Potassium chloride 3.68 

Sodium chloride Traces 

Potassium phosphate 2.34 

Sodium phosphate 0.63 

Calcium phosphate 0.09 

Magnesium phosphate 0.06 

Iron oxide 0.47 

Potassium sulphate 0.13 

Analysis of pancreatic fluid calculated on 1,000 parts, by 

Schmidt and Kruger. 

C. Schmidt Kruger 

Water 900.8 980.44 

Solids 99.2 19.60 

Mineral salts 8.3 3.57 

Sodium chloride 7.35 0.93 

Potassium chloride 0.02 0.07 

Calcium phosphate 0.41 0.01 

Magnesium phosphate 0.12 0.02 

Analysis of bile minerals by Jacobsen and Hoppe-Sayler based 
on 100 parts by weight of salts. 

Sodium chloride 65.16 

Potassium chloride • • 3.39 

Sodium carbonate 11. 16 

Trisodium phosphate 15.90 

Tricalcium phosphate 4.44 

Calcium carbonate Traces 

Potassium sulphate Traces 

Sodium sulphate Traces 

Iron, silica Traces 

Magnesium Traces 

Analysis of gastric juice by C. Schmidt. 

Human Dog 

Water 994-40 973-0 

Total solids 5.60 27.0 

Mineral salts 2.19 6.7 

Sodium chloride 1.45 2.5 

Calcium chloride 0.06 0.6 

Potassium chloride O.55 1.1 

Magnesium phosphate — 0.2 

Iron 0.12 0.1 

Calcium phosphate ■— 1.7 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 71 

■ — ■ ■ — 

In all of these analyses it must be remembered that the chemist, 
handicapped as he is when working in the organic field, has not 
determined the form under which, in their highly organised 
states, the various minerals found in the laboratory previously 
existed in the internal secretions of the living animal. 

In reducing the organic mineral salts and colloids to "ash" 
their form is completely changed so that all the chemist can say 
for the result of his analysis is that the minerals are really 
there, and that they are always there, regardless of the propor- 
tions in which they are found by this or that investigator. 

We must not assume because the chemist has calculated the 
iron of the red corpuscles as "iron oxide" that it would be a 
good thing, therefore, to go to the drug store and purchase a 
dose of iron oxide. The iron in the blood does not exist in 
such form. The chemist has to reduce it to such form before 
he can recover it from the organic compound in which it is 
found in life. 

Herein lies the error made by the patent medicine manufac- 
turer who tries to make the people believe that because certain 
salts are found in the human body therefore medicines contain- 
ing them are good for the human body. 

To assume that because "calcium oxide" appears in an analysis 
of blood serum it must therefore appear in the blood serum 
itself as calcium oxide is a childish error. 

The calcium, iron and other mineral salts as they appear in 
the blood and internal secretions are present in such wonderfully 
complex forms that they cannot be reproduced in the drug store 
or laboratory. 

The dumb grasses of the field possess the power to organise 
these salts of the earth into forms in which they can be assim- 
ilated by the animal. Man with all his intelligence and all his 
laboratory apparatus cannot do this, yet man is presumptuous 
enough to offer excuse, even justification, for his work of jug- 
gling, manipulating, refining and destroying them before he sells 
his finished product to his neighbour. 



72 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 18 — THE HUMAN BODY 

The mineral salts present in the internal secretions of the 
human body are not present through the operation of blind acci- 
dent. Selective action picks and chooses, accepts and rejects, 
absorbs and discards them in a manner so astonishingly intri- 
cate and so exquisite in its rhythmical waves that those who 
study the very majesty of these phenomena are compelled to 
see in them a Supreme Intelligence regulating all their orderly 
activities. 

In the clearly disclosed evidences of that intelligence we be- 
hold the workmanship of God. 

Water forms about three-fourths of the weight of the adult 
body, and is the medium in which its biochemic activities are 
carried on. Even the child knows that without water no plant 
life could exist. 

Plants that have but a single cell, which are not actually im- 
mersed in water, are generally found in more or less moist situ- 
ations where they continually get their supply of water from 
dew or rain. In times of drought they are seriously injured. 

The young cell which is enclosed with a cell membrane 
speedily shows a tendency to accumulate water in its interior. 
Gradually traces of water appear until ultimately a vacuole, 
which is always full of liquid, is formed. 

In the plant which consists of a number of cells such a vacuole 
is found in every adult cell as long as it is living. In other words, 
healthy protoplasm must always be in direct contact with water. 
It is only while saturated with water that the active life of 
protoplasm can continue. 

A few "scientists," taken off their guard in public debate, 
have asserted that the removal of minerals from man's food 
through refining processes can do no particular harm because 
the body contains a store of minerals which do not require to 
be replenished. 

The same preposterous argument would indicate that because 
man's body contains an enormous store of water (three- fourths 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 73 

his weight) it is not necessary for him to replenish that store 
daily. More of this later. 

We now know that with very rare exceptions if a cell is once? 
completely dried, even at a low temperature, its life is gone, 
and restoration of water fails to enable it to recover. 

The life of a plant is intimately connected with the renewal 
of the water which its cells contain. Fresh liquid must be con- 
stantly taken in, just as a new supply of mineral salts must be 
taken in. The water which is already there must, to a certain^ 
extent, be removed. 

The plant depends in fact upon a certain circulation of water,, 
and this becomes the more imperative as its growth increases. 

It has been proved that protoplasm, which, as we have seen,, 
is the active substance found in every living cell of plant or 
animal, draws its nutriment eventually from the salt solutions 
which come to it. 

It has also been established that protoplasm in plant and ani- 
mal must return to these solutions such waste products as it 
gives off. It must obtain its oxygen for instance from water, 
for this element can only pass into the interior of a cell through 
the liquid which enters that cell. 

Thus we see that water is a wonderful medium through which 
the forces of life are conveyed. It is not difficult to believe, 
therefore, that the body of a man weighing 160 pounds contains 
more than ioo pounds of water, not as the result of accident, 
but as the result of a fixed law. 

Of the solid matter found in the human body about one-fifth 
is made up of the minerals — iron, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, 
magnesium, manganese, sodium, sulphur, silicon, fluorine, iodine 
and chlorine. 

Chlorides and phosphates with carbonates and sulphates form 
the chief of these mineral salts as far as weight is concerned, 
but some of the salts which appear in mere traces, such as 
fluorine and iodine, have essential functions to perform, and 
without them we now know that human life as it now exists would 
not be possible. 

One of humanity's most conspicuous sins of omission has 
been its failure to consider reverently the dignity and the com- 
plexity of the human body, which, considered apart from the 



74 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

human soul, is the most majestic work of creation. Let us ex- 
amine a single detail of its marvellous composition. 

If we place a trace of fresh blood under the microscope an 
astonishing picture is presented to the eye. Hundreds of little 
corpuscles are seen floating about in the blood serum; most of 
them are red, but a considerable number are white. 

A single drop of blood contains so many millions of corpuscles, 
far more than all the visible stars in the sky, that less than 
a hundreth part of a drop, the merest trace, must be used on 
the field under the lens in order that the eye may see anything 
at all. 

These red and white corpuscles are in themselves alone suf- 
ficient to confound all the wisdom of the universities, but they 
are not the only substances discoverable in that fragment of 
a drop of blood. 

Moving about with them as part of their structure, or in the 
fluid in which they circulate, we find, as we have seen, the salts 
of iron, calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, magnesium, 
manganese, sulphur, chlorine and many other compounds which 
we shall not consider here. 

These substances are always found when pure and normal 
blood is examined. It is evident they must find their way through 
some definite channel, and in obedience to some well-defined law. 

It has been established on many occasions that the red and 
white corpuscles each have certain well-defined work to do. 
It has also been established that any foreign agency that inter- 
feres with their work or keeps them from getting into the blood 
is an enemy of life. 

In order to compound that marvellously complex solution 
which we call blood, Mother Nature obtains her building ma- 
terials from food, just as she obtains food from earth. Let 
us emphasise this impalpable and imponderable truth over and 
over again. We can never attach to it too great or too sub- 
lime an importance. 

The whole character of the blood depends upon the character 
of the food supplied to the digestive organs. 

What kind of blood is supplied to the 400,000 children under 
ten years of age who die every year in the United States ? 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 75 

What kind of blood was supplied to the "rejects" of the 
army of 1918? 

What kind of food is supplied to both? We shall soon know. 



§ 19 — BREAKING IT DOWN 

The food-minerals and vitamines upon which life depends 
must be in the food man eats, that his body may take them 
from that food. 

All food contains them until man removes them. Consumed 
for a few months, food deficient in some of these building ma- 
terials gradually affects health. 

If we are partial to a particular food from which a consider- 
able portion of nature's building materials has been abstracted, 
disorder is bound to develop. 

Nature, handicapped by the deficiency, will set up warning 
before fatal damage has been done, but if we do not under- 
stand her warning, or if we disregard it, we head straight for 
destruction, unless in the meantime an accidental change of 
diet provides the offsetting substances essential to life. 

Accident and chance are the elusive forces that temporarily 
bar the doors against destruction. 

With the army of the dead, augmented in the United States 
every year by 400,000 children under ten years of age, no happy 
accident ever interfered. 

Surely man should make an effort to locate the law upon 
which so much physical integrity depends. 

Each drop of blood is but an expression of that law. Any- 
thing that interferes with the purity of blood is hostile to life. 
"The blood is the life/' 

Because man leaves so much to chance he sends a call into 
darkness, summoning hundreds of diseases to assist him in 
mismanaging the world in its sad sum total of misery and pain. 

The removal of one substance essential to life marks the 
beginning of disorder in the body. If two substances are re- 
moved the body may make use of the others until the handicap 
asserts itself. Then confusion must ensue. 



76 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

If three, four or five substances are removed the inevitable 
collapse will take place a little sooner. 

If seven or eight substances are removed destruction gallops 
to the end. When all sixteen substances and their compounds 
are removed starvation itself begins. 

If we believe that God has elaborated these substances for 
our benefit it is little short of sacrilege to disregard them, or 
to trifle with them, because by doing so we assert our inde- 
pendence of His designs. 

If God is rejected entirely from the scheme of the universe 
the extraordinary phenomena which spring from food, nutri- 
tion, health and life must sooner or later overpower the spirit. 
In the presence of miracles of life, too profound to be com- 
prehended by the human intellect, the knee must bend. 

But whether man be a fervent believer or a scoffing atheist, 
he must see that breakfast, dinner and supper are not matters 
to be left to accident or the designs of a food factory con- 
cerned chiefly in the profit of its products. 

If he is pale or anemic, if his energy is quickly exhausted, 
if he feels "all run down" and little like undertaking the 
commonplace duties of the day, if his children have lustreless 
eyes, pallid complexions, undeveloped bodies or manifest ab- 
normal tendencies, let him look to his food. 

If they are bright, sturdy and resist illness, which he wrong- 
fully and cruelly assumes must come to all children, let him con- 
gratulate himself that an accident has brought them immunity. 

In congratulating himself let him not ignore the truth. An 
apple falls from the tree in obedience to a fixed law. If his 
children are in health to-day as the result of another fixed law, 
concerning which he knows nothing, let him know that they may 
be protected to-morrow. 

Our sixteen food minerals and the vitamines associated with 
them are no part of chance. They are the law. 

The body derives them, and the resistance they bestow, from 
food and from no other source. To take them from his food 
man must find them there. He cannot find them in food from 
which they have been removed. With their loss he loses his 
resistance. 

If God had not endowed man with this extraordinary resis- 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 77 

tance, the human family would have to keep itself hermetically 
sealed in tin cans or glass jars. 

The salmon is canned because dead flesh offers no resistance 
to germs. A tin shell acts as a substitute in keeping the germs 
off. Open the can and let them in for twelve hours. The results 
will speak even in that short time. Let them in for twelve 
days and the neighbours will retreat. Keep them out and the 
salmon will stay sweet for a century. 

There is nothing quite so marvellous as the power of healthy 
living tissue to hold germ life in contempt. It is quite as ef- 
fective as a hermetically sealed can. Death and putrefaction 
are synonymous. 

Putrefaction simply means the splitting up of tissue com- 
pounds into their simple elements. Bacteria are the instruments 
employed by nature to get rid of the dead. Without germs 
nothing would rot. When a body is embalmed the germs are 
simply held back a little while. 

Bacteria convert dead flesh into gases and dust. On healthy 
living flesh they have no effect. On living flesh that has lost 
its resistance they feed even in life, but they do not convert 
such flesh into gas and dust. They convert it into poison. 

One kind of germ poison produces typhoid, another diphtheria, 
a third syphilis, a fourth pneumonia, a fifth tuberculosis. 

Some germs, invited deliberately into the living temple, are 
not included in God's plan of protecting humanity from their 
assaults, and the body, even when healthy, offers feeble re- 
sistance to them. 

The result is disease, loathsome and unnatural, involving not 
only the bones, nerves, blood and brain, but even the soul. 
The flesh disintegrates and reason itself totters as the germ 
of syphilis cavorts across the human highway in its dance of death. 

But — with respect to the many germs that have their own 
proper functions to perform outside the body, and which there- 
fore in their wide distribution through nature are taken into 
the system almost hourly through food, drink and air, the living 
flesh in health laughs at them all. 

They may approach in battalions only to be overcome as 
rapidly as they advance, whereas a solitary organism entering 
life through the channels of vice becomes venomous, malignant/ 



78 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

powerful. After taking up its residence in the blood it begins 
a blighting reign so imperious and dominating that its evil in- 
fluence passes on to innocent children yet unborn as if to em- 
phasise the truth of the prophecy, "The sins of the father shall 
be visited upon his children even unto the fourth generation." 

Potent poisons such as arsenic, mercury and the iodides may 
retard for a while the catastrophic activity of these avenging 
organisms, but there is no evidence to prove that even when 
these "curatives" are most skilfully administered the forces of 
degeneration are not passed on in some measure from generation 
to generation in accordance with the formula laid down in the 
scriptures. 

Man, surrounded by the artificial protection of modern medi- 
cine, defies, or thinks he defies, the inexorable laws of nature, 
but ever is he confronted by disclosures that above him and be- 
yond him in unseen realms which only the microscope may 
feebly penetrate, are powers so small the naked eye has never 
beheld them, but which in irresistible energy are mightier in 
the number of their victims than earthquake, fire and flood. 

Contemplating this Nemesis of evil, man is consoled by the 
knowledge that it is within his lot to regulate his conduct in 
the flesh so that without the aid of art or science he may rely 
with sublime confidence upon other forces as benign as they 
are beautiful. 

Because he is a free agent he may choose for himself between 
good and evil, knowing that even germs are divided into good 
and bad and that most of them are good. Well may he doubt 
the conclusions of his own arrogance in dismissing the ancient 
doctrine concerning good and evil spirits. 

The folly of rejecting what he cannot see or understand is 
nowhere more visible than in his attitude toward those purely 
material forces of life and death which, prior to fifty years ago, 
were neither seen nor understood by mortal, but which now 
exhibit themselves to reverent eyes in grandure that moves to awe. 

What the ubiquitous tin can, hermetically sealed under the 
laws of sterilisation, is to salmon, natural resistance, safeguarded 
by well-disposed intelligence, under the natural law, is to man 
and his children. 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 79 

Why does he persist in his refusal to see the beauty, the 
benevolence and the consolation of this parallel? 



§ 20 SUBTLE ACTIVITY OF MINERAL SALTS 

This little experiment can be performed in the laboratory of 
any high school to help us grasp an idea of the remarkable con- 
duct of the minerals in the human body. 

First eat a tablet of citrate of lithium. Then take a clean 
platinum wire. Hold the wire in a blue Bunsen flame. It will 
give no colouration to the flame. 

Now pass the platinum wire along the skin of the forehead 
or across the palm ; return it to the flame and note the beautiful 
yellow fire of sodium, showing this mineral at work in the 
elimination processes of the body. 

Without sodium to take up the carbonic acid, evolved tnrough 
the digestion of sugars and starches, as a poisonous waste product 
that must be removed from the body, this acid, better known as 
carbon dioxide, would accumulate in the tissues and destroy 
them. This is why the excessive use of denatured sugars, table 
syrups, and starches in the diet of America is followed by many 
serious diseases. 

Sodium is one of the food minerals indispensable to health. 
The little platinum wire and the Bunsen flame reveal it in the 
performance of one of its many functions. 

Now take a blue glass, which will filter out some of the light 
rays that interfere with vision. Look through it at the platinum 
wire in the flame. Note the beautiful lilac flame of potassium, 
showing this mineral also in the elimination processes of the 
body. The sodium and potassium have been taken up from the 
human skin. 

Potassium helps to keep the tissues flexible and active while 
assisting the sodium to carry ofT the carbonic acid manufactured 
as one of the end-products of combustion in the furnaces of 
life. 

We shall assume now that a half hour has elapsed since the 
tablet of citrate of lithium was consumed. 



80 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Again clean the platinum wire thoroughly. Pass it over the 
forehead or across the palm of the hand. Place it in the flame. 
It is coloured a vivid red. This is the flame of lithium. In one 
short half hour the lithium, taken through the mouth, has cir- 
culated through all the avenues, highways, and by-ways of the 
human body and has appeared after its marvellous journey upon 
the surface of the skin. 

Through this simple experiment we obtain a crude idea of some 
of the hidden forces at work in our bodies. 

There is much evidence that potassium gives life to the 
nervous system and assists the heart to beat by influencing the 
relaxability of the heart muscles. If the heart did not send 
the blood into the lungs the body could not and would not 
obtain the oxygen necessary to its life, nor could it, through those 
delicate tissues, made up of millions of little valves or niters, dis- 
pose of the waste gases which would otherwise poison all its 
organs and glands. 

Many discoveries of science justify the conclusion that potas- 
sium interferes with the hardening influences that menace muscle, 
joint, and artery, making the tissues soft and pliable. 

It has been noted that linen, made from flax grown on granite 
soil, rich in potassium, is noted for its suppleness and softness, 
whereas linen produced from flax grown on calcareous soil is 
hard, brittle, and of little strength. 

In the month of October, 191 5, potassium sulphate was worth 
about $200 a ton, as produced from alunite by the United States 
Smelting Company of Utah. At this price the Armour Fertiliser 
Company purchased its entire year's potash production. In spite 
of the value of potassium salts and the necessity of their presence 
in fertiliser, 106 tons of potassium salts were wasted daily in 
1 91 5 by the twenty-five distilleries in the United States that sub- 
jected morasses to fermentation. 

The farmer has been taught, through various federal and 
state bulletins, to appreciate the necessity of potassium to the 
health and vigour of his plants, yet school children have never 
been taught that when the body cannot secure the quantity neces- 
sary to carry on its wonderfully complex duties the heart ceases to 
serve its master and the body dies. 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 81 



§ 21 — CONSTRUCTION WITHIN ; DESTRUCTION WITHOUT 

Those little soldiers of life called corpuscles are never out of 
the presence of iron. Containing no iron themselves, they never- 
theless swim about in a fluid which does contain iron. If that iron 
were not present the little soldiers would die. 

Iron combines with oxygen in the presence of water, no matter 
where it is found. The blade of a pocketknife, the hinge of a 
barn door, the barrel of a rifle, the spring of a farm wagon, 
become "rusty." Rust is simply a combination of iron and 
oxygen. The chemist calls it "ferrous oxide." 

The wonderful affinity of oxygen for iron is an expression of 
the law under whose operation oxygen finds its way into the body. 
Without the iron in the red colouring matter of the blood the body 
could not appropriate the oxygen from the surrounding air and 
in a few minutes it would perish. 

We need only choke a human creature two minutes to be 
guilty of murder. To choke means to shut off oxygen. The 
carburetor of an automobile engine is equipped with a "choker." 
To stall the engine it is only necessary to resort to this choker, 
which, by cutting off the oxygen, makes combustion in the 
cylinders impossible. 

In exactly the same way combustion, supported by oxygen, is 
necessary to the fires of life. 

If the blood contains only half the iron necessary to bring into 
the body the oxygen it requires it will grow pale and sicken. 
Iron is indispensable. It is part of the law. 

The waste matter accumulating in the human tissues during 
every second of existence would destroy life in twenty-four hours 
if not rendered harmless and carried off. When these waste 
products are only partially removed the result is autointoxication, 
self-poisoning. 

The iron in the blood, uniting in the lungs with the oxygen 
of the air, carries its life-supporting freight to the tissues, where 
it oxidises or burns up the waste substances so dangerous to 
life. 



82 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

If the iron is not present in sufficient quantity to keep up 
with the demand of the body the oxygen that ought to be inside 
performing its work remains outside ready and willing but unable 
to enter. 

When fire, through the influence of oxygen, attacks a piece 
of wood it produces smoke and ashes. Just as the smoke of the 
fire has to be carried off through the chimney and the ashes 
raked through the bars of the grate, so do the oxygen-burned 
waste products of the body have to be eliminated. 

This oxidising process going on in the human tissues pro- 
duces the carbonic gas which we have seen taken up by the 
sodium in the blood and discharged through the lungs as carbon 
dioxide. 

The sodium, having work of its own to perform, has to help 
the oxygen and the oxygen in turn has to be helped by the iron. 
Thus we obtain a vague idea of how these food minerals and the 
other elements necessary to the support of life operate, not 
singly and alone, but in beautiful harmony with each other, in 
unswerving obedience to a fixed law. 

Calcium, commonly known as lime, combines with phosphorus, 
magnesium, silicon, and fluorine in the development of the bones 
and teeth. If the quantity of calcium required by the body in 
the construction of its bones and teeth is reduced the bones and 
teeth suffer. 

We have seen that millions of children in the United States 
are suffering with defective teeth. These defective teeth are the 
direct result of the inability of the body to obtain, in their proper 
form and in their proper combination, the calcium, magnesium, 
phosphorus, and fluorine necessary to the construction of normal 
teeth, either because these mineral substances have been removed 
from the food of the children or because they have been con- 
sumed with other foods that destroy them and remove them from 
the body. 

Chickens obtain the fluorine required for the production of 
their eggs, if they have a chance to pick up a few specks of 
granite. When confined in a wooden henhouse and fed on food 
containing no fluorine they easily develop chicken cholera and 
chicken diphtheria. 

The yolk of the egg requires fluorine. The protective enamel 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 83 

of the teeth requires fluorine. The bones of the spine require 
fluorine. The pupils of the eye require fluorine. 

Silicon possesses powerful antiseptic properties. There is 
good reason to believe that in the establishment of normal resist- 
ance to disease it assists the body to defend itself against the 
invasion of many of the organisms which cause disease. 

Silicon influences the nervous system to perform its functions 
normally. In combination with sulphur it is necessary to the 
development and health of the hair and nails. Bears, bison, 
foxes, sheep, have luxuriant hair, fur, or wool. There are no 
bald or thin-haired squirrels. They consume all the silicon 
nature provides for them. Their hair food and nail food are 
normal. 

Animals fed upon food from which any of the food minerals 
are artificially removed perish. 

Experiments on animals in captivity have proved this. White 
mice, rabbits, guineapigs, hogs, and poultry develop the same 
diseases as those which kill 400,000 children under ten years of 
age in the United States every year, when these animals are fed 
on the same foods so freely consumed by children. 

Food minerals not only themselves engage in the construc- 
tion processes going on constantly within the body but they also 
exercise a controlling influence over the destructive forces that 
threaten the body from without. 

We are now beginning to appreciate the fact that food min- 
erals are precious substances. Yet not a single one of the states 
prevents the adulteration of food through the abstraction or 
removal of them. 



§ 22 — FOOD MINERALS ESSENTIAL TO LIFE 

The smallest boy in the laboratory can be made to understand 
the wonderful oxidising property of sulphuric acid. When this 
acid is generated in the human body, as it is generated every day, 
it is immediately neutralised by the alkaline bases which nature, 
under normal conditions, never fails to provide for that pur- 
pose. 



84 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Phosphoric acid is also generated in the body and neutralised 
in the same manner. Calcium, magnesium, and potassium are 
among the alkaline bases provided by natural foods. If they are 
not present to do their work within a short time the destruc- 
tive action of the sulphuric and phosphoric acids can end only 
in disaster. 

A few drops of sulphuric acid taken into the body from a 
bottle will produce death, by attacking the tissues, oxidising and 
destroying them. 

When food from which the minerals have been removed by 
commercial processes or by foolish methods of cookery is 
introduced into the body, it results in the formation of free 
sulphuric acid from the albumenoid sulphur and of free phos- 
phoric acid from the many complex phosphorus compounds found 
normally in meat, cheese, eggs and other articles of diet. 

These acids, in the absence of the alkaline bases that ought 
to be present, and which in normal, natural foods always are 
present, must be neutralised as rapidly as they are evolved. It is 
because they are neutralised that we find them in the urine as 
discarded waste products in the form of sulphates and phos- 
phates. 

When the neutralising bases have been removed from food 
before it is consumed these acids abstract basic elements from 
the living tissues, thereby impairing or destroying them. 

Meat which is minced and immersed for a few hours in 
distilled water loses its potassium, magnesium, and calcium salts. 
It also loses its colour. If cooked in this condition it will be 
found to be tasteless. If fed to dogs and cats or other animals 
these animals will eat a little, then refuse to take more, and if fed 
on nothing else will actually die more quickly than animals not 
fed at all. 

This can be accounted for not only through the generation of 
free sulphuric and phosphoric acids in the bodies of the animals 
but also by another fact. 

The animals fed on the demineralised meat, in addition to 
being deprived of the food minerals indispensable to life's proc- 
esses, are also obliged to dissipate their reserve vitality at a rapid 
rate through the efforts of their organs to throw off the useless 
and dangerous food elements imposed upon them; whereas the 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 85 

animal starved outright is not called upon to expend its strength 
faster than the laws of starvation demand. 

One feature of the laws of nutrition we are endeavouring to 
emphasize, is that these food minerals are so essential to the life 
and health of the body that when the body is deprived of them 
disease must follow. 

Certain experts have gone so far as to declare that all human 
food contains an excess of mineral salts. 

Where natural foods are considered the statement made by 
these experts is never true. On the contrary, it has been con- 
clusively proved in many instances, particularly where refined 
foods are consumed, mineral salts are carried out of the body in 
life's processes faster than they are taken in. 

This is notably the case in tuberculosis and wasting diseases, in 
which the calcium content of the feces invariably exceeds the 
calcium content of the food consumed. It was the case among 
thousands of the children who, under the age of ten years, died 
last year in the United States. 

Nature does provide a reserve from which, in emergencies, for 
a short time, the body may find the elements it requires. But if 
the diet is of such a refined character that it exhausts nature's 
storehouse, destructive consequences inevitably follow. 

This fact must be remembered in the feeding of children, be- 
cause when the food of the infant is changed from a purely milk 
diet to a mixed diet great injury may result from a deficiency 
of lime and other salts. This injury manifests itself on the 
surface in the form of defective teeth, but defective teeth con- 
stitute only a symptom of much deeper ravages within. 

An exclusive flesh diet is poor in lime and many foods on 
which children are fed have as much as 75 per cent, of the lime 
natural to them removed before they are put upon the table. This 
is one of the reasons why the excessive consumption of meat 
is a curse. Meat is deficient in the mineral salts required by 
the body unless consumed as the tiger and the leopard consume 
it, lapping up the blood and gnawing the bones. 

In consequence, the excessive meat-eater is plagued with 
rheumatism, asthma, and many other diseases in the alleviation 
of which he is sent to the mineral springs to drink water con- 
taining calcium, magnesium, and sodium sulphate, 



86 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

These waters, however large the quantity in which they may 
be consumed, are useless unless the offending diet is first cor- 
rected, the peg removed. 

In its proper place, baby's diet, based on the importance of its 
mineral contents, will be carefully outlined and of even greater 
importance and significance the diet of baby's mother before 
baby is born will receive the same attention. 



§ 23 — THE THYROID GLAND, A POISON DESTROYER 

We shall now consider one more instance of the subtle relation- 
ship between the food minerals and the health of the body. There 
are glands in the neck called the thyroids, the importance of 
which, in the economy of life's processes, was never suspected 
until Breisacher, Plum, Kishi, and Bryce made it clear that the 
thyroids, like every other organ or gland of the human body, 
were really created by God for a special purpose. 

Sometimes when the thyroid becomes diseased it attains an 
abnormal size, swelling out in the form of a great lump (goitre). 
At other times when even more seriously diseased its enlargement 
may be almost unnoticeable, except to the touch. 

It has been conclusively established that in its proper func- 
tioning the thyroid depends upon the compounds of food iodine. 

We have seen how the food minerals help to build up the body. 
We have also seen how they help to tear down the tissues. In 
the processes of assimilation and elimination they are equally 
important. 

In this work of elimination the food mineral iodine and the 
thyroid gland, which iodine affects profoundly, are actively 
engaged, thus helping to rid the body of many of its enemies and 
defending it against the assault of disease. 

Alexander Bryce proved that the intestinal decomposition of 
meat produces poisonous products of putrefaction which are 
absorbed by the walls of the bowel and which, having thus 
entered the system, become powerful irritants. They thus pro- 
duce an increase in the connective tissues of the organs and blood 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 87 

vessels, hardening of the arteries, senile decay, tumours, and can- 
cers. 

Metchnikoff suggested that to aid the body in its effort to 
protect itself against these poisonous products nature has pro- 
vided poison-destroying organs, among which is the thyroid 
gland. 

Breisacher proved the poisonous products of meat digestion 
will quickly kill a dog if the thyroid gland is removed, although 
after its removal the life of the animal can be indefinitely pro- 
longed if fed on bread and milk. 

His experiment established the function of the thyroid as a 
poison destroyer. 

Both Plum and Kishi were brought to the conviction after a 
series of experiments that the function of the thyroid gland is to 
neutralise the poisons derived from the putrefaction of albumen 
in the intestines. 

An exclusive diet of eggs causes a condition among children 
which their parents term "biliousness." This so-called "bilious- 
ness" is simply the result of self-poisoning through the imperfect 
elimination of the protein poison. 

In children some glands do not develop until their twelfth, 
thirteenth, or fourteenth year. The thyroid gland does not begin 
to develop until the third or fourth year of life. Hence the child 
lacks its assistance in taking care of these poisons and eliminat- 
ing them from the system. 

For this reason beef extracts, which contain alkaloids that 
no infant or invalid should be permitted to swallow, become dan- 
gerous food. 

People in feeble health, put on a beef tea diet, are frequently 
made worse because of the imperfect functioning of the thyroid 
and other glands. These alkaloids stimulate and bring about a 
state of functional excitement. Functional excitement does not 
mean invigouration. 

Neither beef nor beef extract contains the merest trace of 
iodine, yet the thyroid depends for its activity upon the presence 
of iodine compounds abstracted from food. 

It has been further established that animals, during the period 
.when they feed on fresh grasses and the seeds of grasses, in 



88 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

accordance with the dictates of the Book of Genesis, have much 
more active thyroid glands. 

The Chicago packers have taken advantage of this phenomenon 
to manufacture the thyroid extracts advertised in the medical 
journals. 

The investigations of Seidell and Fenger on animals shipped 
to the Union Stockyards, in Chicago, from all parts of the United 
States led to a surprising discovery. It was shown by these 
experimenters that the percentage of iodine found in the healthy 
thyroid glands of sheep and hogs was about three times as much 
between June and November, when the animals were allowed to 
feed naturally on green pasture, as that found between December 
and May, when they were fed on impoverished commercial by- 
product foods. 

It was also curiously noted that the thyroid glands became 
larger during the months in which their low iodine content was 
observed, indicating some relationship between the iodine and 
the swelling of the glands. 

What effect had the removal of the iodine from the food of 
the 1,500,000 children under ten years of age who have died in 
the United States during the last four years upon the health of 
those children prior to their deaths? 



§ 24 — COMMERCIALISM DISARMS NATURE 

Babies and small children are handicapped if their parents or 
nurses ignore the meaning of the thyroid gland. Animals can- 
not live without the thyroid under certain conditions, yet one 
of the elements necessary to the normal, healthy thyroid is de- 
liberately removed from the diet every day. 

The grains of the field, barley, rice, wheat, corn and rye, con- 
tain normal traces of iodine before they are refined, but there 
is not a chemist in the country who can discover a trace of this 
indispensable food mineral in a ton of refined white bread, bis- 
cuits, crackers, cakes, table syrups, cornstarch, tapioca, glucose, 
or sugar candy or in any of the other denatured foods upon 




TWO KINDS OF FOOD 89 



which man is now striving to sustain a normal body under dread- 
ful handicaps. 

The thyroid gland is a protecting policeman on guard in the 
human body. The young child eating food unnatural to its 
requirements possesses no such police protection. It lives in a 
state of physiological anarchy. Excess meat in the diet affects 
not only the thyroid but the liver as well. 

In the ingenious experiment conducted by Eck a ligature was 
applied to the portal vein close to the liver, thus cutting out the 
liver from the portal circuit of a dog. It was found that a dog 
thus treated died in three days when fed upon meat, whereas 
another when fed upon bread and milk lived in excellent health 
for an indefinite length of time, notwithstanding the cutting off of 
its liver functions. 

Pavlov showed that the liver has three times as much work 
to do on a meat diet as on a meatless diet. 

According to Bryce, flesh foods, at the time they are con- 
sumed, contain on an average of 200,000,000 putrefactive bacteria 
in every gram. But he shows that nature has not left us to the 
tender mercies of these poison-producers. This is proved by the 
fact that auto-intoxication does not disturb people in normal 
health, all of whose organs and glands, including the thyroid, 
either by good fortune or by the exercise of intelligent discretion 
are normally nourished, thereby enabling them to carry on their 
functioning. 

The people of America are consuming more meat than any 
other nation of the world and whether they know it or not they 
are consuming meat and meat products that have entered into 
advanced stages of putrefaction. 

Frequently they attribute cases of ptomaine poisoning to 
canned tomatoes, condensed milk, huckleberry pie, cheese sand- 
wiches, and other foods. The real truth is never suspected. 

In twenty-six months I was able to obtain forty-seven con- 
victions in the courts against meat packers, sausage manufac- 
turers, and wholesale provision merchants for selling deodorised 
rotten meats and meat products, chemically treated, so as to 
disguise from the unsuspecting purchaser their true condition. 

I have also obtained the removal from office of veterinarians 
and inspectors in the employ of health departments and of the 



90 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Bureau of Animal Industry for the assistance given by them 
to influential but conscienceless food panderers who have not 
heeded these laws of life in their pursuit of dollars. 

The details of these convictions are a matter of court record. 
In the meantime, even when meat is honest, fresh, wholesome, 
and cut from carcasses of animals free from infectious and con- 
tagious diseases at the time of slaughter, it requires normal organs 
to dispose of it properly. 

These normal organs require the elements found in natural 
food to keep them normal. Modern commercialism helps to put 
putrefactive products into the human body and then by refining 
food takes away many of the tools with which nature fights 
these putrefactions. 

The thyroid gland, through the many serious diseases which 
follow a disturbance of its functions, helps to emphasise the 
necessity in the diet of every individual, adult or child, of the 
food minerals which are squandered by modern civilisation with 
reckless abandon. 

Spring time is the season of high spirits in nature. Man alone 
in the spring complains of lassitude. All around him under the 
action of nature's unmolested law he witnesses the miracle of 
rising sap, the quickening strength that swells the bud, the im- 
pelling energy that forces the spear of grass to lift itself upward 
through the lately frozen clod. 

Man contrasts his weariness with the power and mastery, the 
sparkle and glow, the warmth and buoyancy of spring, yet just as 
the earth has the green grass in its depths so has he the freshness 
of nature in his heart. He is just as much a part of nature; 
nature's law grips him just as tightly in its grasp. He needs his 
"tonic," or thinks he does, because he does not follow the laws 
of life, but closes his eyes upon them and sets up standards of his 
own. Unhappily his standards are at war with heaven, and so 
he pays his price in death. 

The time has come when we must teach the child that if he 
wishes to live and grow strong and be useful he must eat the 
food God has made necessary to the growth of his body. We 
shall soon learn how to select that food. 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 91 



§ 25 — WONDERS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE 

In the bodies of animals and plants the twelve food minerals 
are built up into many highly complex combinations, and as they 
are being built up they are also being broken down. In disease 
they break down faster than in health. 

As the tissue is destroyed by daily wear and tear it is trans- 
formed into simpler chemical compounds and passed out of the 
body. In order that the living body may replace its broken 
down cells it must find a constant new supply of the elements 
from which those cells are evolved. 

These elements, as we find them in the soil, can be called non- 
living matter. The chemical processes which transform this non- 
living matter into living tissues are the same in plant and animal 
with this one difference : 

Plants are capable of taking the non-living matter from the 
earth, compounding or organizing it into the wonderfully complex 
substances which form their structure. 

Animals do not possess this power. Animals depend for their 
existence upon foodstuffs prepared from the non-living matter of 
earth by the plants that have the power to prepare them. Other- 
wise man could eat earth, stone, or clay and thus obtain all the 
elements necessary to his existence. We have seen why he cannot 
do this. 

Plants obtain the energy which enables them to perform their 
mysterious work of organising the non-living matter of earth 
from the sun. Only in the presence of sunlight can they carry 
on the upbuilding processes which give them their tissues. Green 
grass will not grow in the dark. 

We know under the influence of sunlight plants are capable 
of combining the carbonic gas and nitrogen of the air with water 
and the mineral salts of the soil into such substances as starch, 
fat, and albumen. They always do this in the presence of the 
food minerals. 

Their ability to bring about these changes depends upon the 
presence of a chemical substance found in their green part which 
is called chlorophyl. We know that chlorophyl requires exposure 



92 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

to the sun's rays in order that it may be able to perform its 
serious work, but of the processes by which it does that work 
we know little. 

We know various parts of the plant and various organs of the 
body contain substances that can be extracted. These substances 
are called enzymes or ferments or vitamines. Some of them are 
pepsin, trypsin, ptyalin. There are many others which need not 
be mentioned here. 

These ferments and vitamines are found in the germ and bran 
of grains, in the marrow of bones, in egg yolk, in leaves, fruit 
juices, whole milk and greens, and are just as indispensable to the 
health of the body as the food minerals. 

We now know positively that in the human body they serve 
the purpose of changing the various foodstuffs which are fur- 
nished to the animal by the plant into substances that can be 
absorbed and built up into animal tissues. 

Ordinary bakers' yeast is a ferment having the power to trans- 
form starch and sugar into alcohol and carbonic gas. It pos- 
sesses the power to rearrange the molecular composition of sugar 
and starch. 

It is a strange but interesting fact that formaldehyde and wood 
alcohol, which are deadly poisons, contain exactly the same ele- 
ments as those which make up the composition of grain alcohol, 
and acetic acid, whiskey, and vinegar. 

Starch, cane sugar, glucose, lactic acid, and carbolic acid also 
contain the same elements exactly — carbon, hydrogen, and 
oxygen. The only difference among them is in proportion and 
arrangement. It is this arrangement which makes some of them 
beneficial foods and some of them deadly poisons. 

Ordinary starch can be converted into sugar by the action of 
ferments. Sugar can then be converted by the action of other 
ferments into lactic acid, alcohol, and acetic acid, depending 
entirely upon the character of the ferment employed. 

In other words, there are good and bad ferments. That we 
sometimes allow the bad ferments to develop and kill off the 
good ones with so-called "harmless" preservatives will be shown 
as we proceed. 

It was thought at one time that the ferments found in the 



——•—•_ 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 93 

digestive glands were the only ferments to be found in the 
animal body. Accordingly our knowledge of their conduct in the 
processes of digestion was limited and in the treatment of many 
diseases the symptoms alone were treated for the reason that the 
cause was never suspected. 

It has been determined in recent years that ferments are of 
many kinds, are present in every cell and are intimately con- 
cerned in all the manifestations of life. 

As many as a dozen different ferments have been found, for 
example, in the liver cells. 

It has also been demonstrated that for the maintenance of life 
in the case of the higher plants the organised ferments are of 
profound importance. Through them the higher plants obtain 
their nitrogen from the air in a form which they can utilise. 

So it is seen that even in the presence of all the necessary food 
minerals, if the ferments be absent or destroyed or decomposed, 
vegetable or animal life cannot be normal. 

Each of these ferments has a special function to perform. In 
the animal body, for instance, some of them, such as pepsin, 
can act to advantage only under acid condition. Others, such 
as ptyalin, require an alkaline condition. Still others can act 
under acid, alkaline, or neutral conditions. Fixed laws control 
them. 

Certain ferments will act only upon certain definite substances 
and under the proper conditions. 

Fat-splitting ferments, for instance, act only upon lard, butter, 
cream, oil; diastase ferments act only upon starch and sugar; 
proteolytic ferments act only upon albumen. 

Of their chemical composition little is known that is definite 
and just as little is known of the equally important vitamines. 
We do know, however, that food of the wrong kind, food badly 
prepared, food which has suffered an unnatural loss of some 
of its elements, can set up conditions hostile to the action of these 
ferments, and that in setting up these conditions we invite 
physiological discord, disease. 



94 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 26 — THE ASH OF FOOD 

We know that human gastric juice is acid in action, that it 
contains sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, 
iron, and chlorine, and depends upon these elements for its 
physiological activities. 

We know if we remove any of these elements or change any 
of them or prevent the body from finding any of them, by remov- 
ing them from our food, we thereby establish unnatural condi- 
tions in the gastric juice and inevitably bring about disorder. 

We know that pancreatic juice, unlike gastric juice, is alkaline 
in action and contains sodium, potassium, phosphorus, magne- 
sium, and lime. 

From this fact we learn that one part of the digestion is car- 
ried on in an acid medium while another part is carried on in an 
alkaline medium, and our conception of the intricacies of the 
human laboratory increases in admiration and amazement. 

In our continued contemplation of these mysteries it becomes 
more and more evident that man has no right to ignore the 
wonderfully complicated structure of the human body when he 
decides to go into business and manufacture for profit the hun- 
dred foodless foods which have become so popular on the break- 
fast, dinner, and supper tables of unsuspecting Americans. 

The enzymes, ferments, and vitamines exert such a profound 
influence upon digestion and assimilation that we receive a shock 
when we learn that in the preparation of many of our most com- 
monplace foods we destroy them or so completely change their 
nature that the functions which they are expected to perform are 
so modified as to make them useless. 

The mineral salts that we have described; the ferments, 
enzymes, and vitamines — let us put it bluntly — are removed from 
our daily food by commercial practices that pander to false 
taste standards. The industries that remove them have suc- 
ceeded, to some extent at least, in establishing high-sounding jus- 
tification for their work and up to this stage of the world's 
enlightenment have been equal to the task of fogging the atmo- 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 95 

sphere sufficiently to cloud any attempted work of reform under 
the darkness of controversy. 

Chemists and pathologists are found willing to go on record 
with some such statements as these: "Of the metabolism of 
foods, of chemical change, of the exact action of enzymes and 
bacteria, we are profoundly ignorant, therefore we should not 
give consideration to the mineral contents of our diet. 

"We derive so many minerals from so many articles of food 
that we can afford to remove most of them from our diet; and, 
furthermore, so little is known about the conduct of these min- 
erals when ingested with food that the subject is at least not im- 
portant enough to occasion grave alarm. 

"There are so many offsetting foods which completely replace 
the mineral salts and vitamines lost through commercial methods 
of food refinement that we need not worry about the presence of 
these substances in our food supply." 

Signed statements and magazine articles appearing regularly 
in the magazines of uplift, the purpose of which is everlastingly 
to quiet natural anxieties concerning commercial foodstuffs, in 
spite of the death of 400,000 children under ten years of age in 
the United States every year, constitute the defence of those 
whose food industries would suffer if the people enacted state 
and national laws that would forbid them to denature their food 
supply. 

For reasons of their own these men tell us we have sufficient 
carbohydrates, proteins, and fats (bread, meat, and butter), so we 
need not bother about the minerals or ferments of our food. 

Yet they admit they know nothing about the food minerals. 
Prior to 1912 the only thing the public ever heard of in connection 
with a description of food was the academic division made by 
dietitians. This division consisted of three groups — carbohy- 
drates, proteins, and fats. There was another division to which 
some of them, on rare occasions, slurringly referred. They called 
this fourth division "ash." 

The division of ash was always exasperatingly ignored and 
apparently had little if any meaning for dietitians and was not 
considered by them as significant or important. 

As it began to dawn upon various investigators working at dif- 
ferent places in Europe and America that a diet of pure carbohy- 



96 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

drates, pure proteins, and pure fats would not support life, the 
subject of "ash" grew more formidable and more fascinating. 

Physicians and chemists everywhere admitted that personally 
they knew nothing about ash in relationship to food and did not 
know where to obtain information. 

It is the ash of food that contains the mineral salts of that food. 
When the mineral salts are removed they take the vitamines with 
them. 

Tons of ashless food, denatured food, demineralised food, de- 
based, impoverished, foodless food, were consumed along with 
good and adequate food by the 400,000 children under ten years 
of age who died in the United States last year. 

How many of them would be alive and well to-day if none 
of their foods had been denatured, if all of it had been good 
and adequate ? That is the question we must answer here. 



§ 27 — CALCIUM IN THE LIVING BODY 

The history of life on this earth, including the history of micro- 
organisms, or germs, as they are popularly called, is the history of 
food. 

As the bodies of men are built from the building materials 
found in food, so the bodies of bacteria are also built from the 
building materials found in their food. 

Bacteria may become violently active, or feeble to the point of 
exhaustion, in accordance with the kind of food offered them. 
Man is affected by his food in the same way. 

The blushing maiden of sixteen and the trained athlete of 
thirty are physically but the sum-total of the food they have 
assimilated. 

The old man, normally approaching the hour of dissolution, 
represents all that is left of the processes of assimilation and 
elimination which, even prior to birth, were carried on only by 
virtue of the food energies presented to the embryo from which 
he came. 

The new-born babe, in all the pink freshness of its little sleepy 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 97 

life, represents only that fragment of the food appropriated by 
its bones and tissues during its embryonic existence. 

The bacteria that convert milk, eggs, meat, fish, and other 
foods into poisons, represent, according to their activity, the ease 
with which they are able to find the kind of food necessary to 
their rapid growth or the difficulty placed in the way of their 
normal nutrition and reproduction. 

Bacteria, with a significance worthy of noting here, depend 
upon the mineral salts and colloids precisely in the same manner 
as that in which the bodies of men depend upon them. 

As we go along we shall encounter many interesting, not to 
say fascinating, proofs of this statement. 

For the present we have learned that a certain combination of 
some twelve mineral elements is surrendered by our food for 
the building processes of our bodies. 

All foods contain some of these building materials; other foods 
contain all of them. 

Many foods, for instance, contain calcium in the highly organ- 
ised combinations which are acceptable to the needs of the human 
body. Commercial methods of manufacture remove this cal- 
cium from their products. 

Absurd methods of home-cooking also remove them. That 
such calcium loss should not be tolerated is disclosed by a study 
of the functions performed in the body by calcium. 

Calcium assists the digestive ferments to perform their duties. 
When food is robbed of its calcium normal digestion does not 
progress. This influence on ferments is not confined to the 
digestive tract. In the laboratory and the food factory also we 
see it at work. 

Rennet, for instance, is a ferment. It is used to make curd 
from milk. Curd is the first step in the manufacture of cheese. 
That the rennet may perform its duties in the manner expected 
by the cheese-maker it is necessary that the calcium natural 
to all normal milk be perfectly soluble. To make sure of this 
solubility the cheese-maker adds hydrochloric acid to the milk. 
He knows that if the calcium is thrown out of solution the curd 
will never become cheese. 

Oxalic acid would throw the calcium out of solution. So would 
sterilisation at the boiling point. In any mixture of milk so 



98 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

treated the ferment rennet, thus deprived of the influence of 
calcium, refuses to operate and the cheese maker makes no cheese. 

If, while in a state of health, you should cut your finger, the 
soluble calcium in your blood would cause it to coagulate at the 
surface of the wound and you would not bleed to death, as you 
would if it were not for the interference of the calcium at the 
disposal of nature. 

In certain diseases where the normal content of calcium is no 
longer present in the blood the wound refuses to heal. One of the 
commonest symptoms of anaemia, acidosis, nervous prostration, 
etc., is the refusal of even the slightest wounds to heal promptly. 

Surgeons, realising the importance of this function performed 
by calcium, frequently attempt to introduce it into the blood 
before serious operations in the form of calcium lactate. They do 
this in order to prevent hemorrhage following the use of the knife. 

No hint of the function performed by calcium is ever found 
on a bill of fare in a restaurant or hotel. 

No placard hangs on the wall in the office of the food factory 
cautioning the factory manager against the toleration of any 
process of refinement through which calcium or any of the other 
mineral elements of prepared food are removed and lost to the 
human family. 

Yet when we diminish the proper quantity of calcium in our 
blood we correspondingly lower our vitality and reduce our re- 
sistance to disease. 



§ 28 — CHILDREN SUFFER, PROSPECTIVE MOTHERS DECLINE 

In every kitchen, restaurant, hotel, boarding house, hospital, or- 
phan asylum and commissary food, through ignorant methods of 
cookery, is not only robbed of its calcium but it is also robbed of 
many of its other mineral salts and colloids. Before food reaches 
the kitchen the manufacturer robs it of a large percentage of 
these priceless mineral elements. 

Dr. James R. Mitchell, while lecturer of chemistry at Fort 
Worth University Medical College, supplemented the work of 
other investigators by a study which showed 86 per cent, of the 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 99 

school children of Louisville were suffering from defective teeth, 
in spite of the fact that they live in the "limestone" state. 

It has been said that Kentucky is a veritable quarry of cal- 
cium. Yet, in the presence of millions of tons of bone and tooth- 
building material the children of this calcium kingdom had so 
much difficulty in finding sufficient calcium for their needs that 
86 per cent, of them, in the calcium capital itself, manifested 
the most conspicuous symptoms of calcium starvation. 

With a zeal born of indignation, and therefore, because of its 
ardor, considered in high places unethical, Mitchell pointed out 
how dentists prescribe tooth washes and tooth-pastes ; how they 
advocate oral hygiene ; how they fill cavities and fit bridges, while 
all the time the primary cause of tooth-destruction remains 
ignored. 

We know if there is a deficiency of calcium salts in the food 
the body will actually tear down its own structure in order to 
obtain the calcium necessary to maintain the integrity of its in- 
ternal secretions. 

In the case of a calcium deficiency in the food the body goes 
to the only available source of calcium supply, the lime of the 
teeth and bones. That lime is gradually consumed until, weaken- 
ing the structure of the teeth, it finally leaves but a shell of flu- 
oride enamel over a honey-combed structure. 

In Ireland, where calcium deficiency is conspicuous, there is an 
old saying among the peasantry. "With every child goes a tooth," 
runs this adage. The fact that maternity is so frequently followed 
by tooth troubles, a result of the demand of the unborn upon the 
mother's tissue for bone-building calcium, has been noted by many 
observers and probably accounts for the quotation credited to 
Irish women. 

Where calcium is abstracted from the tooth under-structure, 
the thin enamel, made thinner by fluorine starvation, sooner or 
later cracks or breaks under pressure, thereby opening an avenue 
for the entrance of putrefactive bacteria, which begin the work of 
true decay. The ruin is really accomplished long before any 
evidence of decay is disclosed. 

Sugar and fruit acids have no effect on the enamel of normal 
teeth. Sound teeth can be immersed in a solution of sugar or 



100 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

fruit acids for months and suffer no erosion. The experiments 
of E. Howard Tunison and others have proved this. 

Sugar does not act directly on the teeth at all, and the dentist 
treats the symptom, not the cause, of bone destruction when he 
plugs up cavities and fits bridges. 

This observation is not intended to minimise in any manner 
the importance of skilful dental treatment, keen appreciation 
of which is not wanting by the writer. 

Sugar and calcium possess a remarkable affinity for each 
other. When refined sugar or glucose, both of which are mineral- 
free and, therefore, like distilled water mineral-hungry, are con- 
sumed in generous quantities they attack the soluble calcium of 
the tissues. 

The tissues retaliate in turn by sapping the calcium of the 
blood. The blood, which demands a minimum calcium content, 
with never relaxing energy steals calcium from the teeth and 
bones. The experiments of Voit and others prove this. 

Druggists know how wonderfully calcium combines with sugar. 
Accordingly they manufacture what is known as syrup of lime. 
One thousand parts of water will take up approximately one part 
of calcium. When sugar is added the water will take up ap- 
proximately thirty-five times as much calcium. 

Children will suffer and prospective mothers decline as long 
as they consume an excess of refined or denatured, mineral-free 
sugar, glucose and starch in their diet or as long as food industries 
continue to remove the soluble mineral elements from the chief 
sources of their food supply. 

As we advance step by step in our study of the indispensable 
food minerals we shall approach one of the prolific causes of in- 
fant mortality; one of the prolific causes of pallor and anaemia 
among women and, as shall be conclusively proved in its proper 
place, one of the greatest single causes behind the difficulties of 
maternity as well as one of the greatest single causes of many pre- 
ventable ills which attack child and adult alike. 

Butcher shops grind the bones of the ox, sheep, and hog into 
what they call "chicken bone." It has been noted by poultry and 
egg producers that if hens are not fed a plentiful supply of cal- 
cium in the form of such "chicken bones" or in the form of 
cracked oyster shells or other similar calcium food, they will lay 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 101 

soft-shelled eggs for a while, then cease to lay eggs of any kind. 

The dog which on a meat diet is not also fed bone will, like the 
human, suffer tooth decay. His skin will be tettered ; his hair will 
fall out, his disposition will be mean. 

The lioness of the circus cage fed with meat alone brings forth 
cubs with cleft palates. Meat does not provide the calcium 
necessary to the formation of the bones of her cubs. 

Caged mice fed with distilled water and processed corn meal, 
such as is purchasable in every grocery store in the United States, 
develop "nerves" just as men and women robbed of their calcium 
also develop "nerves." As the calcium-free diet is continued the 
mice are stricken with convulsions, passing in the meantime 
through all the symptoms of pellagra, beri-beri, acidosis, and 
general prostration. 

What are the effects of the removal of the calcium from the 
food consumed by the large army of adults afflicted at the age of 
forty and beyond with hardening of the arteries, heart disease, 
Bright's disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. ? 



§ 29 — ADD ARTIFICE AND SUBTRACT NATURE 

In the laboratory When pneumonia germs are studied it is found 
that a little sprinkle of calcium will revive a culture in a stationary 
state. 

Calcium is necessary for the strength of the bones, for the 
hardness of the teeth, for the firmness of the muscles, for the 
tone of the nerves, for the coagulation of the blood on demand, 
for every pulsation of the heart, for the digestion of the food, 
for the functioning of the kidneys and other vital organs, for the 
health of the body. 

When a baby is deprived of its necessary calcium its bones are 
softened. The muscle deprived of its calcium quivers and 
twitches. The nerves under such deprivation act in similar man- 
ner. 

We know how oxalic acid acts on the body when introduced 
with food. We do not know how other chemicals act upon tissue 
calcium, yet the food manufacturer who employs other chemicals 



102 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

gives no thought to the manner in which his germicidal agents 
may interfere with the integrity of life's processes. 

Food manufacturers declare their chemical preservatives are 
"harmless." Scientists are found to agree with them. Thus 
they set up arguments of such plausible and convincing character 
that the government has been prevailed upon to permit them to 
employ chemicals in the manufacture of a hundred food products. 

One thing is certain. There is premature and untimely death 
everywhere. Men and women suffer out fifty years of more or 
less misery instead of living the same fifty years in a state of 
bounding, buoyant energy and health. Yet eminent professors 
declare it is unscientific to connect untimely death and prevent- 
able ills with the follies of our diet system. 

We shall see as we progress whether it is unscientific to estab- 
lish such a connection between food folly and disease or whether 
it is the refusal to admit such connection which is unscientific. 

This we know. Some dozen drugs can now be legally put into 
food intended for interstate commerce and another dozen are 
permitted by various state governments in the manufacture of 
foods not intended for interstate commerce. 

At least twelve necessary mineral elements can be legally taken 
out of foods intended for interstate commerce. Thus the manu- 
facturer is permitted to add to nature's formula or subtract 
from it at will, depending entirely upon what he considers neces- 
sary in attaining the commercial results desired. 

The 400,000 children under ten years of age who died last year 
loved their "innocent" cakes, cookies, crackers and biscuits ; their 
"innocent" white bread smeared with syrup and factory jam ; 
their "innocent" gorgeously coloured candies. 

We smile at the very thought of the farmer mixing with his 
carefully and scientifically prepared food the red, blue, green, 
yellow, brown and purple ribbon dyes of the coal tar family 
which the law permits the manufacturer of foods intended for 
human consumption to use. 

We smile at the thought of his adding to his cattle food borax, 
sulphurous acid, saccharine, sodium benzoate, copper sulphate, 
aluminum sulphate, anhydrous sodium sulphite, butyric ether, 
amyl ether, cenanthic ether, ethel ether, valarienate ether, formic 
ether, benzoic ether, acetic ether, esters, aldehydes, coumarin, 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 103 

vanillin, pyrolygneus acid, soap bark, furniture glue, lamp black, 
shellac, gum benzoin, paraffine, stearic acid, hydrogenated fats, 
hydrolised starch and other foodless substances so frequently 
mixed with the food of the growing child and the nursing mother. 

All these substances at this hour are now in use in the United 
States. With the exception of borax and copper sulphate they are 
all legal. 

Little pigs are tenderly cared for; the young colt, the baby 
calf, the wee chicks, are watched with a solicitous eye. Caution, 
vigilance, common-sense, scientific knowledge, are exercised to 
produce stock that will yield a profit. In consequence, when 
money is invested in animals they are fed on a diet carefully ar- 
ranged and their young do not die untimely deaths when their 
food is of a proper kind. 

But human beings ! That is another matter. The law says, 
"You shall not consume carbolic acid, arsenic, opium, cocaine, 
morphine or heroin, nor shall you purchase them under any cir- 
cumstances whatsoever unless the law's restrictions are removed 
by trained and licensed physicians." 

The law also says in substance : "The food of your children 
may be whatsoever the food manufacturer sees fit to sell you." 

You are now prepared for the long neglected truths concern- 
ing that great human destroyer — the white bread of America. 
You will now learn exactly how your daily bread is robbed of 
its vitalising mineral elements, not its calcium alone but its iron, 
potassium, magnesium, silicon, phosphorus, iodine, its ferments, 
enzymes and vitamines. 

You will now learn how to go about the work of getting your 
share of straightforward, honest food such as nature provides 
for you and desires your children to consume. 



§ 30 — WALKING WITH A BROKEN STAFF 

Three times each day for three hundred and sixty-five days each 
year a table is spread in each of twenty million households in the 
United States. This means that sixty million meals, however sim- 



104 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

pie, are served for the pleasure and nutrition of the family be- 
tween the rising and setting of every sun. 

At each of these annual billions of occasions — the exceptions 
are too few to count — 21,900,000,000, to be exact, the housewife 
places one article of food on the table. Whether that table be set 
in a mansion or in a hovel, whether it be loaded with an abundance 
of the luxuries of life or whether its contents be confined to one 
or two simple articles of food, there is one food always present. 

Is it to be wondered at, therefore, that bread is called the "staff 
of life"? 

What then if the staff on which humanity leans so trustingly 
be broken? 

The flour advertisements with which the magazines are crowded 
tell us peculiar and wonderful things about flour. Millions of 
dollars are spent annually to inform us that our flour is washed, 
brushed, scoured, screened, and sifted through grits gauze and 
silk bolting cloth until nothing leaves the mill but utterly perfect 
flour! As late as August, 1918, The Saturday Evening Post pub- 
lished an advertisement of the Quaker Oats Company, frankly 
telling the public that "Quaker Best Corn Meal" contains none 
of the fibrous outer coat, none of the oily germ, nothing but the 
flinty starchy part. 

Millions of dollars are spent annually to exploit the virtues of 
anemic crackers, denatured biscuits, and foodless cakes. Devoted 
mothers, believing the statements made to them through the 
highly coloured printed page and the gaudily decorated bill-board, 
rely with a profound faith upon the demineralised nutriment 
which advertising art extols. Their babes, from the very begin- 
ning, are taught with a broken staff to walk. 

Thus is reared a race of such vigour that it sends in one year 
nearly 400,000 children under ten years of age where white bread 
and starchy biscuits are no longer needed. 

Nature never made a white grain of wheat and man never 
knew the meaning of white flour until he conceived the fetching 
idea of startling his guests with bread as white and lifeless as 
the aristocratic napery on which it is served. 

The unrefined grain of wheat as it comes from the field con- 
tains in organic form the twelve mineral substances needed for 
the health, growth and life of the animal body. Chickens, guinea 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 105 

pigs, white mice, or monkeys fed on bread made from the unre- 
fined wheat thrive indefinitely, but chickens, guinea pigs, white 
mice, or monkeys fed on an exclusive white bread diet perish in 
from five to seven weeks. 

Wherefore the whiteness of white bread? How is this white- 
ness obtained? These are questions which we have set out to 
answer. 

White bread becomes white because from the ground grain of 
wheat three-fourths of the mineral salts and colloids, including 
the salts of calcium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, chlorine, fluo- 
rine, sulphur, magnesium, manganese, etc., are removed. These 
mineral substances are contained in the brown outer skin, the 
cells underneath this skin and the germ of the wheat berry. They 
are sifted and bolted out of the ground meal leaving behind the 
white starchy cells and the refined gluten of the interior part of 
the berry. 

Nature, in her most benevolent efforts to teach man that he 
cannot trespass with impunity against the laws of life, through 
thousands of years of agricultural experience, has failed to im- 
press him with the priceless value of these subtle substances in 
the assembling of which for his needs she travels through so many 
subtle and divers paths. 

In the whitening of flour not only are the mineral salts and col- 
loids removed from the wheat, but its ferments or vitamines, one 
of which was discovered by M. Mege Mouries in the inner cortical 
part of the wheat, are rejected. 

The millers who make our flour and our corn meal assure us 
that they are conferring a great blessing upon humanity in pre- 
paring a refined white product. To obtain a still whiter whiteness 
they even go so far as to bleach by an electro-chemical process the 
demineralised flour which passes through their silk bolting cloths. 

To confront them with 400,000 children under ten years of age 
who died in the United States last year, notwithstanding the daily 
familiarity with white breadstuffs which these children suffered 
without resistance, is but to provoke a smile fortified by "proofs" 
of the benevolence of their conduct. These "proofs" usually bear 
the signature of scientists. 

What scientists' signatures can open up those little graves and 
deliver back to the fond and empty arms of grieving parents the 



106 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

million five hundred thousand children that have died in this 
country during the past four years? 

What will scientists' signatures do for the enfeebled soldiers 
who survive the European war or for their half-fed widows and 
orphans during the reconstruction period that faces them ? 

In the many public controversies which I have had with the 
millers they have frankly admitted that they do not give the people 
white flour or white bread products through their own choice. 
They say that because the people think they want white flour and 
white bread they are obliged to cater to such wants. These admis- 
sions are nevertheless usually accompanied by a statement that 
white bread as contrasted with bread made from the whole grain 
possesses ''superior digestibility." 

Nothing is said of the alarming increase of cancer, diabetes, 
Bright's disease, heart disease and hardening of the arteries now 
causing so much concern among life insurance companies on ac- 
count of the fact that their chief victims are found in middle age. 

Nothing is said about the fact that at the age of forty, when 
man should be at his best, and continuing until his fiftieth year 
the increase in these diseases is at its height. 

There is much evidence to indicate that middle-age mortality is 
directly associated with denatured food. All of such evidence 
will be submitted here in its proper place. 

Of course there are other causes also at work in the production 
of some of these increasingly prevalent middle-age diseases but 
the facts which will be treated with sufficient detail, indicate con- 
clusively that demineralised and refined food is chief among these 
causes. 



§ 31 — "digestibility" and "indigestibility" 

There are many prejudices to overcome before whole wheat 
bread, whole wheat cakes, whole wheat biscuits, whole wheat 
muffins, whole wheat waffles and other whole wheat breadstuff's, 
with all their wealth of vitality, can be restored to the people. 

Some of the millers declare the bran of wheat is a powerful 
irritant and, therefore, people not in normal health cannot use it 
without injury. 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 107 

They say whereas bran in whole wheat might be advantageous 
in special cases — an admission suggested by the recent appearance 
on the market of numerous brands of bran — it is an undesirable 
element in bread because it is "indigestible." 

Pepper is "indigestible," so is nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, mus- 
tard, mace, allspice, cloves. The fibre of orange, pineapple, 
celery, string beans, asparagus, canteloupe, is "indigestible." The 
seeds of strawberries, raspberries, figs, grapes, are "indigestible," 
just as the bran of wheat is "indigestible" and for the same rea- 
son, if the word "indigestible" is assumed to mean that in their 
journey through the body none of these substances is taken up 
by the body and transformed into tissue. 

None of such substances is actually indigestible. In its course 
through the body the bran surrenders its soluble extractives 
which are taken up by the tissues and the residue which remains 
behind is a water absorber. As such it performs a most important 
and necessary function in the intestines. 

Every time we eat a roasted or boiled ear of corn we eat the 
bran. Every time we eat Boston baked beans or fresh peas we 
eat the bran of these legumes. It is well that we eat these things 
because, while they are not digested in themselves in the sense 
of being taken up and oxidised in the production of heat or 
energy, they nevertheless contribute to the body the soluble salts 
and colloids which they contain and without which energy-pro- 
ducing foods are useless to the living body. 

Let us take an animal membrane such as a bladder and fill it 
with a solution of any of the food minerals and hang it on a nail 
against the wall. It will hang there for days, weeks, or months, 
and there will be no leakage of its contents through the skin. Not 
a drop will ooze through the membrane to appear on the outside. 
We see that it guards its contents as faithfully as would a glass 
bottle properly corked. 

If we now take the filled bladder and immerse it in a tub con- 
taining another solution of different density a remarkable phe- 
nomenon will be observed. The contents of the bladder will begin 
to pass out through the membrane into the solution on the outside, 
and the solution on the outside will begin to pass through the 
membrane to the inside, so that eventually the solution on the 



108 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

outside and the solution on the inside will be identical in char- 
acter. 

The dissimilar liquids will be thoroughly diffused. The process 
by which this diffusion is brought about is called osmosis. Osmosis 
is going on in the body all the time. 

We create and thus change the mineral constituency of the 
internal secretions every time we eat. We thereby continue to 
change the character and density of the fluids in which the cells 
are bathed. Thus do the cells obtain their nutriment. As long 
as life continues osmosis does not cease. Protoplasm derives its 
nutriment through this process of osmosis. 

In fevers or wasting diseases accompanied by extreme exhaus- 
tion as the result of inability to consume food, or in cases of star- 
vation, the fluids inside the cells gradually become identical in 
specific gravity with the fluids in which they are bathed so that 
osmosis becomes very feeble. When it ceases altogether death 
ensues. 

The minerals nature has put into wheat and the other grains 
and man so deliberately removes from his diet are lost to all his 
needs and the vitalising mission they are designed to perform 
are not performed. 

Just as chopped meat surrenders its mineral salts to the water 
in which it is immersed so also does the bran of the grain sur- 
render its minerals to the internal secretions of the body. 

But bran not only furnishes indispensable mineral salts to the 
body. It also acts as a regulator of the peristaltic action of the 
alimentary tract by which the contents of the intestines are kept 
moving onward and downward. 

One of the curses white bread and refined grain foods impose 
upon humanity is constipation. A thousand ills are traceable to 
this disorder. Patent medicines by the hundreds have been mar- 
keted in order to help pill-consumers bridge over the misery 
their white bread inflicts upon them. 

Constipation is the malevolent origin of the woes of many 
American women who, through the congestion set up by inhibited 
peristalsis, are afflicted with uterine and ovarian disease that make 
their lives miserable. 

Constipation is not the trifling disorder the public foolishly be- 
lieves it to be. We are about to see how grave it really is and to 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 109 

what extent it undermines the health and vitality of America. A 
proper understanding of the significance of constipation will 
destroy the white bread superstition. 



§ 32 — CONSTIPATION 

The world little suspects the gravity of constipation, or the 
readiness with which it submits to correction. Even the physician 
needs to be reminded of the serious nature of this preventable and 
entirely unnecessary evil. 

Listen to what Drs. John H. Musser and George Morris Piersol 
of the University of Pennsylvania have to say to their brother 
physicians throughout the United States if you would appreciate 
the folly of looking upon constipation as a trifling disease. Here 
are their words : 

"No clinical symptom is more frequently encountered in the 
practice of medicine than constipation. The commonplace and 
obstinate character of the affection is perhaps responsible for the 
prevalence of the idea that constipation is a necessary evil rarely 
capable of permanent cure. 

"As a result of this false and dangerous attitude the people 
are prone to look upon the condition with indifference, which 
allows them to be content with a certain degree of temporary 
relief, too often brought about by the easiest means at their dis- 
posal, namely, the use of purgative drugs. 

"This attitude is not only erroneous, it is harmful. Constipation 
is but a symptomatic expression of some underlying disorder, and 
any treatment to be efficient must be directed, not to the temporary 
removal of the symptom, but at the cause. 

"Dietetic errors are among the most frequent general causes of 
constipation. These consist in food which is deficient in residue 
(bran) by reason of which the bowel is deprived of the mechani- 
cal and chemical stimuli necessary to promote proper intestinal 
activity. 

"A diet suitable for constipation must be one which will furnish 
adequate stimuli to the intestinal mucosa by means of undeposited 



110 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

residue and the various chemical substances elaborated during its 
digestion." 

Do these words of Drs. Musser and Piersol, directed in such 
serious manner to the medical profession, clash with the phi- 
losophy of ridicule preached by the millers? To the victims of 
constipation who are so easily influenced by plausible assertions 
I leave the answer. 

"Be careful," say the millers, "on your journey, John, not to 
eat any white bread. If you do your teeth will fall out. Be sure 
somewhere to get a spoonful of bran in your grub or you will 
become a victim of the Philippine itch. Keep a sharp lookout for 
that brown, brindled, spotted rough stuff known as whole wheat 
bread or you will surely perish." 

In the face of this sort of attack, aimed at the weakness of 
human nature to withstand the assaults of ridicule, however far- 
fetched, great truths are content to be smothered and old evils 
abide with us unmolested. 

Drs. Musser and Piersol are explicit in their advice to their 
fellow-physicians. Here are their plain statements : 

"Whole wheat bread, whole rye bread, or pumpernickel should 
be used in preference to white bread. 

"Whole oatmeal and the coarser cereals, such as whole corn- 
meal, are important adjuncts." 

The scoffers must surely experience difficulty in dismissing such 
statements when they emanate from recognised authorities. 

What we want, however, are not statements, but proofs. This 
is why w-e began at the beginning, why we are content to make 
progress step by step, why we are dealing only in established 
facts. 

The references of Musser and Piersol to whole oatmeal, whole 
corn meal, and the coarser cereals will, in their proper places, 
release a volley of proofs, each one of them sufficiently startling 
in itself to provoke a panic among the commercial beneficiaries of 
denatured breakfast-foods and breadstuffs. 

It has been conclusively established that bread made of the 
whole wheat, just as it comes through the cleaning machines from 
the field, together with the other unrefined foods to which these 
words are dedicated, will save our daughters and our daughters' 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 111 

children from the hundred evils which food follies have imposed 
upon them. 

Dr. Albert Westlake, in his paper on "Babies' Teeth to the 
Twelfth Year," says : 

"Babies' teeth should receive consideration at least six months*, 
before the child is born. Necessary elements in their building are 
furnished at this period by the mother's blood. 

"Teeth require more organic phosphates, particularly the phos- 
phates of calcium, and more calcium carbonate than other parts 
of the body; therefore, bone food is necessary for the mother 
(cows' milk, eggs, especially yolks, peas, beans, lentils, whole 
wheat, outer grains, etc.). Dietetic treatment for the mother is 
very important at this period while bone is forming. 

"The intestines of the child are also undergoing vital changes 
at this period and earlier. This includes, as has been established 
by Dr. Herbert D. Pease, the primary fixation of the child's intes- 
tine in the left hypochondriac region. 

"It is therefore vital to the off-spring to establish perfect per- 
istalsis of the mother's intestines. Elimination and evacuation 
should be regular without drugs. Constipation is the enemy of 
both mother and child." 



§ 33 — SUSPECTED CAUSES OF CANCER 

Because constipation in the United States causes more human 
misery than drunkenness we shall not dismiss the subject until 
it is considered in connection with the prevalence of acidosis and 
cancer, now on the rapid increase from coast to coast. 

The demand for laxative pills, cathartics and heart depressors 
for the relief of constipation and the headaches due to the ab- 
sorption of retained toxines from congested intestines over- 
loaded with decay, is greater than the demand of the "morning 
after" for bracers. 

It is needless to reassert this truth, for all of us know that if 
we ask any druggist what one so-called remedy is most coveted 
by the human race we shall be told that "constipation pills" sit 



112 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

on the mountain top of popular clamour for relief from dis- 
tress. 

The average creature, who lives largely on food deficient in cel- 
lulose, fibre, and mineral salts, needs no description of the mis- 
ery constipation begets, but there is another warning for such 
creatures which should not be ignored. 

Diagnosticians are agreed that many of the ills that plague hu- 
man nature are preceded by a history of constipation. They 
also agree that freedom from constipation averts many ills. 

They are not agreed upon the cause of cancer. Some of them 
believe cancer is a premature aging and breaking down of the 
cells. They hold that certain cells become aged while the tis- 
sues around them are still in a state of comparative youth. The 
aging cells they say express their senility by returning to a more 
embryonic form and as they do so increase in number, thus re- 
sulting in the morbid growth they call cancer. 

In the opinion of many cancer specialists this faculty of multi- 
plication is one of the manifestations of degenerating cells. 

Other cancer specialists hold that cancer is the direct result 
of irritation, either mechanical or chemical, and that it may be 
produced by the absorption of an unidentified poison. 

Still others believe that it is produced by the invasion of a 
parasite yet unrecognised and too small to be discovered by the 
most powerful microscope. While they are all in doubt about 
the origin of cancer, they all know it is increasing at the rate 
of 2.4 per cent, a year in the United States. 

Dr. Horace Packard of Boston University, discussing the can- 
cer question before the Surgical and Gynecological Society of 
the American Institute of Homoeopathy at Chicago, June 28, 19 15, 
declared that demineralised foods form a factor in the devel- 
opment of cancer. 

"The human family is underfed in mineral food salts/' he 
said. "A momentous fact is that the flour mills of the civilised 
world are busy eliminating every particle of iron, phosphorus, 
sodium, potassium, silicon, calcium, chlorine, magnesium and sul- 
phur (mineral salts) from our staple food supply and sending 
out food material rich in heat units but pitifully meagre in ener- 
gising and immunising material. 

"Since a critical examination of the habits of life of civilised 



TWO KINDS OF FOOD 113 

cancer-plagued people in comparison with the habits of prim- 
itive cancer-free people shows that the main difference between 
them is in a dietary poor in mineral salts among the cancer- 
plagued people and a dietary rich in mineral salts among the can- 
cer-free people, the most logical and rational course is to adopt 
this as a keynote to cancer treatment. 

"All forms of malignant disease are possible only because of 
absence of or loss of immunity. All animal life in normal state 
of environment and supplied with nutriment bearing all the or- 
ganic ingredients necessary for the maintenance of disease-re- 
sisting vitality possesses in itself a protective immunity to cancer. 

"In view of the well established fact that in the vegetable world 
an adequate supply of the earth's salts, phosphorus, potassium, 
iron, magnesium, silicon, calcium, etc., acts as a distinctive de- 
terrent of parasitic life and makes for vigorous disease-resisting 
life, may we not assume as much for the animal world?" 

There is indeed a direct relationship between the known 
causes of constipation and the suggested causes of cancer. This 
relationship is based upon the loss of cellulose, mineral salts, col- 
loids, and vitamines in our breakfast foods and breadstuffs. 

Take, for instance, the bran of wheat, one of the food ele- 
ments lost to modern cancer-plagued civilisation. Wheat bran 
consists of three layers, all of which contain larger proportions 
of cellulose or fibre than the interior of the grain. 

The two outer layers contain more of the phosphorus, calcium, 
and iron compounds than the other parts of the grain ; while the 
innermost layer contains a special kind of protein, which is the 
seat of the indispensable vitamines lost in the milling of wheat. 

As we have seen, bran is not so "digestible" as first-patent 
flour for the reason that all of first-patent flour is absorbed 
whereas all of the bran is not absorbed. The mistake of esti- 
mating the food value of any food by its ability to undergo com- 
plete absorption has already been recognised by many authorities 
and it is to be hoped the medical profession will soon give to 
the non-absorbable food elements the importance that belongs to 
them. 



THREE: WHY MODERN REFINING PROCES 
SES ARE MORE DEADLY THAN WAR 



THREE: WHY MODERN REFINING PROCESSES ARE 
MORE DEADLY THAN WAR 

§ 34 — CORN MEAL OR CORNLESS MEAL 

The folly of comparing the "digestibility" of white patent flour 
with the "indigestibility" of bran is self-revealed through the very 
nature of the arguments employed by the millers. 

"Complete absorption" means constipation. Deficiency of min- 
eral salts means constipation. Absence of cellulose or fibre 
means constipation. Bran takes up moisture and holds it in the 
intestines, thereby making the intestinal mass more elastic, stim- 
ulating peristalsis and increasing the rhythmic waves of con- 
traction and relaxation so necessary to the process of elimination. 

Bran surrenders to the body the solubles it contains. These 
solubles, physiologically active, are absorbed to perform the meta- 
bolic task assigned them. Had God not meant them to be pres- 
ent He would not have called them from the void. 

Bran is but one of the discarded particles of wheat, corn and 
rice. Its importance must not be overemphasised at the expense 
of the other discarded particles. Bran in itself is not a food; it 
is merely a natural constituent of wheat, corn, rice, peas, beans, 
etc. 

White patent flour contains approximately n per cent, pro- 
tein; bran contains 15 per cent. Flour contains 1 per cent, fat; 
bran contains 4 per cent. 

The lecithins or phosphorised fats are found in the bran and in 
the germ of the grain. In the milling of patent flour and re- 
fined corn meal the lecithins are discarded. 

Patent flour, like refined corn meal, contains less than one- 
half of 1 per cent, mineral salts. The bran and germ of the 
grain contain nearly ten times as much. Of phosphorised com- 
pounds alone bran contains twelve times as much as patent flour. 

This does not mean that bran is a substitute for whole meal. 
It is not. Bran lacks many of the elements found in the cells 

117 



118 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of the thin outer skin of the wheat. It is the whole grain, with 
bran and germ included, nothing added and nothing removed, 
that is ground into honest, adequate, God-given meal. 

Such meal is rich in all the food minerals and vitamines essen- 
tial to animal life, containing just that quantity of bran neces- 
sary to make constipation impossible. 

Where constipation is avoided the absorption of the irritating 
and poisonous end-products or toxines of intestinal putrefaction 
is rendered quite impossible. 

Thus one of the suspected causes of cancer and of many other 
diseases, including hardening of the arteries, is also avoided. 
Involuntary suicide and auto-intoxication are synonymous. 

The proposition that bran or any other food adjunct will cure 
cancer is not advanced here. Foolish would be the cancer vic- 
tim who resorted to bran as a cancer cure, but there can no longer 
be any doubt that the absence of these essential food substances 
from the diet are responsible for the development of many dis- 
eases. 

Our government in 191 7, to extend the supply of wheat and 
to improve the nutrition of the masses, contemplated the wisdom 
of restricting the consumption of wheat to whole wheat. The 
millers of patent flour seeing in this project grave danger to 
their industry, succeeded in thwarting the movement. 

Our government then urged us to eat wheat substitutes, em- 
phasising corn in particular. 

Certainly our boys "over there" wanted us to follow our gov- 
ernment's suggestion. They wanted us to eat corn. We can 
say this positively, because we know they wanted us to do every- 
thing necessary to win the war. 

We knew that without the sacrifice of life on the battlefield 
and without the sacrifice of pet ideas and cherished habits at 
home, speedy and decisive victory could not be achieved, yet we 
did not consume corn as we should. We did not make a soldier's 
honest effort to secure the kind of corn we should have had. 

Our indifference to corn can be explained by the fact that the 
kind of corn now served to us is not only flavourless, due to the 
milling system that robs it of its flavour, but like white wheat 
flour, it lacks the indispensable substances of an adequate diet. 

In asking us to eat corn our government certainly wanted us 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 119 

to eat the right kind of corn. We can get the right kind of corn 
by going after it. God grows no other kind. 

We know that corn will produce the finest poultry ever grown, 
but we have doubted its value as a human food, not knowing 
that the kind of corn fed to poultry is not the kind fed to the 
human. 

We know that corn will produce an abundance of eggs, but we 
are sceptical of its ability to nourish human tissues, not realis- 
ing that the kind of corn fed to human beings will not produce 
eggs. 

We know that corn will produce the heaviest and meatiest beef 
which only the great corn belt of the Middle- West is capable of 
producing, but we assume that it will not put on the backs of men 
the flesh it will put on the backs of cattle. Yes, it is true that 
the kind of corn fed to man will starve cattle. 

The near-corn for which man tries with little success to de- 
velop an appetite will kill poultry, hogs and cows. Chickens fed 
on it will die in less than fifty days. Children fed on it to the 
exclusion of other offsetting foods will speedily develop pellagra. 

Children fed on it with an insufficiency of milk and fruit so lose 
vitality and resistance to disease that they become easy victims 
of any infection that passes along. 

What then is the difference between corn that will nourish 
animals and near corn that will kill animals? between corn that 
will nourish men and near corn that will not nourish them ? 

Why do farmers recognise this difference, providing only the 
right kind of corn as food for the animals in which their money 
is invested? 

Why do fathers and mothers of children ignore facts that 
farmers apply to the development of their live stock? 

Would our boys in the trenches, fighting for the betterment 
of the human race, ask us to answer these questions if they knew 
the answer, honestly applied to our own home needs, would in- 
crease our health, strength, stamina and endurance, and by re- 
leasing other necessary foods to our soldiers and our allies con- 
tribute heavily to the winning of the war? 

Of course, they would. 

What then are the facts ? 

The whole kernel of corn contains 10 per cent, protein. Re- 



120 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

fined corn meal contains less than 8 per cent. This protein 
difference is of little moment, but it represents a deficiency which 
becomes progressively worse as we go down the line of nutritive 
substances withdrawn from refined corn meal. 

God puts these substances in the grain; man takes them out. 

The whole grain contains 4.3 per cent, fat derived chiefly from 
the germ. This fat is not like lard. It is a highly complex sub- 
stance containing the "fat soluble A" without which no young 
animal or child can grow, and without which no adult can main- 
tain health. 

In refined corn meal only one-fourth of the original fat of the 
kernel is preserved. In whole corn meal we find the vitalising 
mineral salts, all of them, to the extent of fifteen parts to the 
thousand, whereas in the refined corn meal only four parts are 
left, many of the salts having been removed entirely. 

Like whole wheat, the kernel of corn has a fibrous outer skin 
beneath which is a layer rich in protein and phosphorus com- 
pounds of complex character. This layer is called the gluten 
layer. Within it lies the germ. 

All these layers and the germ itself with their rich mineral 
compounds and vitamines are discarded in feeding man, al- 
though carefully preserved in feeding animals. Yet the laws of 
nutrition apply to man and beast in the same manner. 

Not only do these substances, discarded in our effort to "im- 
prove" on God's handiwork, contain the vitality of the corn, they 
also contain its flavour, both of which are lost in the refining 
process. 

This loss makes man instinctively turn his back on corn. 

Certainly in war and in the reconstruction that follows war 
we ought to be just as much concerned in putting beef on the 
backs of our soldiers and workers as upon our corn-fed animals. 

Thousands of our doctors and nurses went to the other side in 
191 8. Surely when medical attention for preventable ills at 
home becomes scarce we need more resistance than ever. 

Why do we tolerate any dietetic condition that menaces the 
health of prospective mothers, of nursing mothers, of grow- 
ing children, of workers in shipyards, munition plants, fac- 
tories or shops ? 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 121 

It is our duty to aim for efficiency and productivity, free from 
the handicap of preventable afflictions. 

Even in peace when we succumb to deficiency diseases caused 
by a one-sided diet our doctors cannot help us unless they re- 
store the missing nutritives of which we have been deprived. 

The archives of the United States Public Health Service at 
Washington are filled with records that prove this assertion. 

What, then, shall we do about it if we fail to insist that all 
our millers of corn meal shall give us the whole grain, freshly 
ground ? 

Of course, our mills should be nearby. 

Corn will keep for years unground. Only when tempered 
with water and ground long before it is needed does corn spoil. 
Spoiled corn is unfit for food, but it need not spoil. 

The trouble with the corn miller is that when he releases his 
demineralised, degerminated and impoverished meal he wants 
none of it to return a thousand miles to him ''out of condition." 
He wants it to stand on the shelf of the grocery store a year, 
if necessary, and not become rancid during the interval. 

He is not concerned with the food properties of his product. 
He is interested in the profit per package. Such ideals do not 
win wars, nor do they conserve the health of the nation, nor do 
they inspire men who understand them to lay down their lives 
in their perpetuation. 

Fortunately, at an expenditure of five or six dollars we can 
obtain little grinding machines for use at home. With them we 
can make our own whole corn meal as well as our own whole 
wheat meal if our grocers refuse to provide the unrefined prod- 
uct. Once the millers witness an invasion of their field by 
a sufficient number of hand mills to make them pause in their 
present system, they will begin to vie with each other in the 
production of grain foods as they should be produced. 



§ 35 — ANEMIA, TUBERCULOSIS, HEART DISEASE 

Constipation is the enemy of mother and child. It is wide- 
spread among adults of both sexes. It gives rise to many physi- 



122 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

cal ills which originate in congestion, inflammation, irritation, 
and absorbed toxines. 

There are many reasons why the prospective mother and her 
unborn babe should not be robbed of the salts of food. 

The millers will never know how many babies they have 
handicapped from birth. See section 99. 

Be it remembered that.no chemist can tell us in terms of grams 
anything about the exact quantity of phosphorus, iron, potas- 
sium, lime, silicon, sodium, magnesium, manganese, sulphur, 
chlorine, fluorine, or iodine which we should take into our bodies 
every day. 

Nature has fixed that mysterious and hidden formula for us, 
yet, confounded in our wisdom, we turn our backs upon the truth 
and seek destroying novelties in the paths of darkness. 

The chemist admits he can never tell us the exact quantity of 
these bio-chemic salts necessary to the life and health of the 
human creature. 

Three chemists at Columbia University devoted months to a 
study of but three of the twelve food minerals, determining noth- 
ing as to the quantity of them required, but determining every- 
thing as to their necessity. 

Humanity seems unwilling to trust the Creator in this re- 
spect. Eminent scientists seem unable to believe that all nat- 
ural unrefined foods, whether they be fruits, grains or grasses, 
contain all the elements necessary to see them safely on their 
journey through the body. 

By assuming the right to manipulate, modify., or destroy the 
presence and proportion of these food minerals in commercial 
breadstuffs, they refuse to see the wreckage they have left in 
the wake of their mineral contempt. 

They do not know how they have burrowed into the vitality 
of human life while it is still in the mother's womb. 

They do not suspect to what extent they have been responsible 
for anemia, tuberculosis, heart disease, and the other ills, such 
as pneumonia, diphtheria, scrofula, measles, appendicitis, dia- 
betes, Bright's disease, cancer, etc., that follow lowered resist- 
ance and the destruction of immunity. 

We cannot go into a theatre, church, public building, trolley 
car, or walk along the dusty city streets without inhaling the 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 123 

living micro-organisms which cause tuberculosis, yet, if our re- 
sistance is normal, we need have no fear of the disease because 
the germs are destroyed as fast as they enter our bodies. 

If this were not so, because everybody is exposed to tubercu- 
losis, all the nations of the earth would perish from this disease. 

In typhoid epidemics all do not develop the disease. Nor- 
mal vitality provides in some the resistance necessary to combat 
the assault, however violent. 

Through the facts to follow we may obtain some hint of the 
relationship our denatured foods now bear to the constant in- 
crease in those diseases of adult life, cancer, diabetes, Bright's 
disease, appendicitis, hardening of the arteries, and organic heart 
disease, which are destroying so much of the best among men 
and women. 



§ 36 — REJECTED FOOD MINERALS A MOUNTAIN OF FOLLY 

To obtain an adequate conception of the gigantic scale on 
which the nation is now undermining its vitality we must ex- 
amine a few extraordinary figures as large and significant as the 
tabulations of disease and death with which they are related. 

In 191 5 the United States produced the largest yield of wheat 
ever grown in any country of the world — 1,002,029,000 bushels. 
This wheat was worth $932,888,999. 

Of corn in 191 5 the United States produced 3,090,509,000 
bushels, worth $1,913,025,071, the most valuable corn crop ever 
grown. 

The barley, rye, and rice crops of 191 5 in point of production 
established records. 

The barley was worth $118,577,682, the rye $37,861,403, the 
rice $22,313,350. 

In addition there was a record buckwheat crop worth $12,- 
854,750. At the 1918 war values these grains were worth three 
times as much in cash but just as little in food value. 

Here surely, according to the statistics announced Nov. 8, 
I 9 I 5> by ^e Department of Agriculture, was reason for the 



1M THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

celebration of a joyous Thanksgiving throughout the United 
States. 

Yet, from all this wheat, corn, barky, rye, rice, and buckwheat, 
from all of these hundreds of thousands of tons of the bread- 
stuffs of the nation, the phosphorus was removed, the potas- 
sium was removed, the iron was removed, the manganese was 
removed, the magnesium was removed, three-quarters of all the 
mineral salts and colloids, all of the ferments, enzymes, and vita- 
mines were removed. 

Two per cent, of the total weight of wheat consists of min- 
eral salts. Rice contains less, oats more, corn nearly the same. 

What a tragedy has been enacted through the washing, screen- 
ing, sifting, and bleaching of our wheat, through the brushing, 
scouring, and polishing of our rice, through the degerminating 
of our corn, through the pearling of our barley, through the 
thinning and extending of our buckwheat; through the refining 
of our rye! 

Take wheat alone as an index of the extent of the losses sus- 
tained by humanity through the denaturing processes through 
which all these grains are prepared for human consumption. 

Each bushel of wheat produced in 19 15 weighed 57.9 pounds, 
a total of more than 580,000,000,000 pounds, of which 2 per cent., 
or more than 5,000,000 tons, consisted of food minerals. Of 
these five million tons three-fourths were completely lost in the 
refining process. Here, with wheat alone, we witness the wanton 
destruction of nearly four million tons of the food elements most 
indispensable to the health of man, woman, and child. 

We see the deliberate rejection of the keystone of the arch, 
yet when we add to this the rejected food minerals of our corn, 
barley, rye, rice and buckwheat we build up a mountain of folly 
so colossal in its menace to the human race that well, indeed, may 
statesmen tremble when they behold its dimensions. 

Other nations have taken alarm as proof after proof of the 
ravages for which foodless foods are responsible have been dis- 
closed. 

In May, 191 2, I received from the honourable secretary of the 
Bread and Food Reform League of England a record of the 
experiments conducted by Dr. Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Fel- 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 125 

low of the Royal Society, reader in chemical physiology of the 
University of Cambridge. 

Hopkins experimented with an 80 per cent, whole wheat meal 
which, though not containing all of the wheat, yet retained a 
much larger proportion of the bran and germ than white flour. 

Even with such semi-impoverished material the results of 
his investigations were so remarkable that they inspired a be- 
lated agitation in behalf of whole meal loaf or, as it was called 
by the London Daily Mail, "household bread." 

At the same time Dr. E. S. Eddie and Dr. G. C. Simpson, 
members of the research staff of the School of Tropical Medi- 
cine, University of Liverpool, carried on investigations in which 
the effects of refined flour and white bread upon children and 
adults were carefully studied in contrast with the effects of 
whole meal or whole wheat bread. 

An extended research was also conducted by Dr. Benjamin 
Moore of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in which 
groups of pigeons were fed on bread made from fine white flour, 
while other groups of pigeons were fed on whole wheat bread. 

The results afford further irrefutable evidence of the essential 
health-giving qualities of those parts of grain and cereal foods 
which are discarded in the milling of flour, polishing of rice, 
pearling of barley, refining of rye, and the degerminating of corn. 

One thing we know: the mountain of rejected food minerals 
is balanced, alas, how inadequately, by a lake of patent medicines. 



§ 37 — OUTER PARTS OF THE GRAINS AND THE NERVOUS 

SYSTEM 

Dr. Frederick Gowland Hopkins, department of chemical phy- 
siology, University of Cambridge, will prove a stumbling block 
to all millers of "patent" flour. He says : 

"The superior value of whole wheat meal lies in the fact that 
it retains certain food substances whose presence allows our 
systems to make full use of the tissue-building elements of the 
grain. These substances are removed from the fine white flour 
in the milling. 



126 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

"All my work to date confirms my belief in the superior food 
value of standard whole wheat bread. After definitely proving 
that young animals grow with very much greater rapidity on 
brown flour than on white flour, I have been able to improve 
the tissue building rate of the white flour subjects by adding 
to their white flour an extract made from the brown flour. 

"To make the best use of any food material, such as the 
proteins for instance, certain other food substances and possibly 
a variety of them must also be present in definite proportions. 

"If one essential food constituent which ought to make up 
at least I per cent, of the total food is present in only half its 
normal amount, then when it is a case of building up the tissues 
the system will only be able to make use of half of the other 
food elements even if these other food elements make up the 
main bulk of the food. 

"This principle has long been recognised as regards plant life 
and growth. A plant in order to attain perfect growth must find 
in the soil a certain minimum of each of many elements. 

"Consider, for example, the element potassium. If only half 
the necessary amount of potassium be present, then, no matter 
how abundant may be all the other soil and air constituents, their 
normal utilisation is limited to one-half. The rate of growth 
and the ultimate development of the plant are consequently 
depressed. 

"The absolute amount of potassium employed in growth is 
very small compared with the carbon or nitrogen; but any de- 
ficiency in it limits growth as surely as a deficiency in the more 
important elements. 

"The substances of unknown nature may need to be present 
in very small amount, but if the necessary minimum is not avail- 
able the utilisation of other constituents in tissue growth or 
repair is infallibly deficient. 

"In the process of converting the wheat grain to fine white 
flour these elements are lost or destroyed. It follows that no 
matter how much nourishment they might otherwise contain our 
systems cannot make the best use of such nourishment, owing to 
the absence of those elements necessary to their assimilation." 

The conclusions of Eddie and Simpson of the research staff 
of the School of Tropical Medicine, University of Liverpool, 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 127 

throw still another light upon the experiments of Hopkins. 
They say: 

"It has been proved by Braddon and other workers in the 
East that exclusive use of polished rice as a diet leads to a 
form of acidosis or peripheral neuritis. This disease does not 
occur in those native races who use whole rice or unpolished 
rice as a diet. 

"Our own experiments have been extended to similar work 
in relation to the stripping of the outer case from the wheat 
berry so as to produce a white bread instead of a brown bread 
and we find that parallel results are obtained when the outer 
layers are excluded from the diet with both wheat and rice. 

"These experiments clearly demonstrate that the outer part 
of the grain contains the essential constituents for the nutrition 
of the nervous system both in growing animals and in adults." 

Benjamin Moore, chief of the biochemical department of the 
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, as the result of his 
laboratory research, was forced to the following conclusions : 

"Groups of pigeons have been fed on fine white bread made 
from white flour known to be unbleached and unadulterated, 
while similar groups of pigeons have been given an ordinary 
quality of whole wheat bread. 

"The white bread pigeons have all speedily developed marked 
symptoms of malnutrition and serious nerve derangements. Be- 
sides losing weight they sit listless and shivering, lose power in 
their legs, suggesting nerve paralysis, while many develop con- 
vulsions. 

"The whole wheat bread pigeons, on the other hand, con- 
tinue healthy and up to normal weight. 

"In another series of experiments pigeons which had devel- 
oped grave nervous symptoms on a white bread diet recovered 
completely when, after a week of special nursing, they were 
placed on an exclusive whole wheat bread diet during their 
convalescence." 

§ 38 — STUNTING THE GROWTH OF THE YOUNG 

"All the recent work done in the biochemical laboratories 
of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine proves beyond 



128 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

question that in all cereals, such as wheat, barley, oats and rice, 
there are series of important substances incorporated in the 
inner layer of the husk which are essential to the nutritive value 
of the grain." These are the words of Dr. Benjamin Moore, 
chief of the biochemical department of that institution. 

"If these elements are eliminated in the milling or prepara- 
tion of the grain, a diet largely composed of cereals or bread thus 
denatured will not only fail adequately to nourish the body, but 
will tend to set up active disease. 

"Certain of the diseases of malnutrition among children, no- 
tably rickets, scurvy-rickets, tetany and convulsions, present 
symptoms very similar to those we note in our white bread 
pigeons. So striking is this similarity that physicians who have 
followed up our work are already treating certain of their mal- 
nutrition patients with a diet of whole wheat bread. 

"Our nerves as a nation are much less stable than in the days 
prior to a white bread diet. All our work suggests that the 
growing tendency of the age to neurasthenia, 'nerves,' etc., is 
not unlikely due to removing from our diet those very elements 
of cereal food which nature has hid in the husk of the grain, 
and which man, in his ignorance, discards." 

A special meeting of the British Association and the Health 
Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health was called at 
Portsmouth to consider the results of the work done by Hop- 
kins, Eddie, Simpson, and Moore. Little has come of this work 
for the reasons that such discussions usually take the form of 
ponderous scientific data and the people learn nothing of them. 

Prior to the investigations of these British scientists an ex- 
tensive research into the same subject had been conducted in 
France. Armand Gautier, internationally eminent, had explored 
the entire field of nutrition, inspiring numerous other French 
scientists to undertake work of similar nature. 

All of them have arrived at the same conclusion. Man has 
lost the instinct of nourishing himself. The lower animals, when 
left to themselves, have an innate knowledge of proper food, but 
it is necessary that mankind be instructed in a certain amount 
of scientific knowledge in order that a health-sustaining and 
disease-resisting diet may be selected. 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 129 

Just one week before the grim day in which France became 
involved in the conflagration that spread over the nations of 
Europe in 1914, a little group of French scientists, with no thought 
of the calamity so shortly to overtake the world, gave to humanity 
the results of their experimental research into the dangers of 
feeding with refined cereals. 

Their conclusions were published in a French medical journal, 
July 25th, 1914. Born as they were in the agonies of a reign of 
destruction and death they possess peculiar significance to the 
people of the United States, who, a few weeks later, were 
advised by various commercial-scientific committees, seeking to 
solve the problem of war prices, to turn away from wheat and 
wheat flour and consume rice, rye, barley, corn, and oats instead. 

E. Weill and G. Mouriquand were two of the investigators 
who carried on numerous experiments with a refined and de- 
mineralised diet for the purpose of determining its effect upon 
the artificial production of anemia, nervous prostration, inter- 
ference with the growth of the young, and the breaking up of 
the natural forces which, in the healthy, well-fed animal, enable 
it to resist disease. 

Their conclusions, literally translated from the French, are 
as follows: 

"To determine whether the effect of feeding pigeons with 
pearled barley would bring about the same loss of health as that 
which follows feeding with white flour we fed groups of birds 
with such barley, which, like refined wheat, is deprived of its 
germ and outer layers containing the mineral salts and vitamines 
of the seed. 

"The pigeons thus fed showed similar waste and paresis of 
the limbs and wings as has been frequently noted on a white 
bread diet. These symptoms were followed by ataxic cerebellar 
or labyrinthine phenomenon — the animals falling backward or 
laterally with hyperextension of the limbs and head, ending 
in death. A cataleptoid condition sometimes preceded death 
where there had been no previous symptoms." Again see 
section 99. 



130 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 39 — INCREASED CONSUMPTION OF MEAT 

Not content with the results of their experiments, which 
demonstrated the inadequacy of pearled barley as a life sustain- 
ing food, Weill and Mouriquand subjected pigeons to a mixed 
diet of pearled barley, polished rice, and bolted wheat flour from 
which the germ, the bran and underlying layers, containing the 
salts, had been removed. 

Weill and Mouriquand expressed the results of their experi- 
ments in these words : 

"All the pigeons fed on this mixed diet of polished rice, pearled 
barley and bolted wheat flour showed paralytic disturbances 
ending in death. We have thus proved that symptoms of the 
beri-beri type can result from a diet of refined cereals. 

"Nutritive disturbances in infants are doubtlessly, at times, 
caused by a too exclusive feeding with exhausted flour derived 
from decorticated cereals. 

"The physician should take care to vary the diet of the weaned 
child and include in it cereals from which the pericarp, bran and 
germ have not been removed." 

Six months later another Frenchman, A. Balland, national 
associate of the Academy of Medicine, issued a warning to the 
French government in which he said: 

"Several times I have pointed out the exaggerated develop- 
ment of the bolting of flour, which augments the price of bread 
and diminishes its nutritive value. 

"Notwithstanding the known facts it is in vain that some of our 
most distinguished physicians, eye-witnesses of the miseries 
suffered in hospitals, who are anxious for the future of the race, 
have arisen against the invasion of white bread. 

"The bolting of flour, flavoured by the world-wide cultivation 
of wheat, which is extending every year, reaches at the present 
time as much as 50 per cent, of the weight of the grain, while 
less than fifty years ago only 13 per cent, of the grain was 
unutilised in flour milling. 

"Household bread has disappeared from the ration of the 
French army and this fact is specially dwelt upon by those who 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 131 

dread the effects of the use of white bread because never in 
the history of France is there greater need than just now of 
well-nourished, active, and long-enduring soldiers. 

"Recently the bolting of flour used for the French army bread 
has discarded from twenty to thirty per cent, of the weight of the 
grain. The result has not let itself be long waited for. Every- 
where the ration of bread appears insufficient ; the hunger of 
the soldier is less satisfied. 

"At the beginning of the French revolution, when the army 
bread was made entirely of unbolted flour, the subject was placed 
before the Academy of Sciences for a decision concerning the 
advisability of removing a portion of the grain, and Parmentier, 
the agriculturist, who introduced the cultivation of the potato 
into France, prepared the official report. 

"Even then it was recognised that bolting the white flour 
was injurious and did not constitute a substantial aliment for 
the soldier." 

Balland, quoting from this ancient report, says: 

" 'What is good for the soldier is good for every man who 
is engaged in active physical work and who needs thoroughly 
nourishing food. The bread so universally employed to-day 
is made of the central parts of the grain which are the least rich 
in the color of the bread/ " 

Supplementing Balland's warning Michel Levy, and Begin, 
army official inspectors, declared: 

"Bolting eliminates the useful elements of flour in more than 
one respect and has no other compensation than an improvement 
in the color of the bread. 

"What the white bread lacks in nutrition has to be made up 
by an increased consumption of other foods containing the miss- 
ing elements. This fact is brought out very clearly in the re- 
ports of the food supply furnished by the French army. 

"The use of white bread enormously increases the consump- 
tion of meat, which, when pushed beyond the limits of normal 
toleration, is followed by many physical derangements as grave 
as those which result from the mineral deficiency of refined 
cereals." 

Never before has any case been made in behalf of public 
health in which the evidence has been so overwhelming or so 



132 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



conclusive. Yet, if we may be permitted the phrase, "the worst 
is still to come." 



§ 40 — RICE, SCOURED AND POLISHED 

Few Americans have ever eaten rice as nature intended them 
to eat it. The beautiful grain, midway between cream colour and 
light brown in hue, with a flavour that the polished rice eater has 
never tasted, has been banished from the United States for 
many years. 

The robbed substitute is the brushed, scoured, polished, and 
sometimes talcum coated grain of commerce, so degraded and 
denatured by the milling processes through which it passes that 
when fed to the fowls of the barnyard it brings about their 
death in seven weeks. 

Fed on the natural, unrefined grain containing all the elements 
with which nature has endowed it, the creatures of the barnyard 
thrive indefinitely. 

The "innocent" bowl of rice, as we now scour and polish 
it, served to the growing child and the convalescent struggling 
desperately upward out of an abyss of distress, will not support 
human life. We have robbed it as we rob the wheat. 

No, this is not the cry of an alarmist. Behold the facts. 

In the Philippine Islands a disease called acidosis, or beri-beri, 
has wiped away countless thousands. 

We have similar diseases in the United States, but we call 
them inanition, anemia, neurasthenia, nervous prostration, gen- 
eral breakdown. 

Beri-beri, or acidosis, journeys from one stage to another, 
through all of these experiences. Its name neither adds to nor 
detracts from its ability to destroy. Those who encounter it 
die the death. 

Dr. V. G. Heiser in the year 1910, then director of health 
of the Philippine Islands, Dr. Fraser of Singapore, Dr. Aaron 
of the Philippine Medical School, Dr. Highet of Siam, and Dr. 
DeHaan of Java, produced evidence that showed conclusively that 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 133 

acidosis, or beri-beri, is caused by a diet of polished rice, such 
as is consumed in the United States. 

As early as 1905 Dr. Donald McCaskey had noted the ravages 
which follow a diet of polished rice. 

Polished rice does not introduce some mysterious germ into 
the body. It simply starves the blood and tissues until they no 
longer offer a defence to any germ. 

With resistance broken and immunity destroyed, as the result 
of inadequate nourishment, pathogenic organisms take up their 
residence in the weakened tissues of the body, and grow and 
multiply until disorder ensues. 

During January and February, 1910, another of the many 
outbreaks of acidosis among the inmates of the Coulion Leper 
Colony aroused the interest of the little group of physicians 
named above. 

The disease resisted all medical treatment. It was noted that 
the lepers were striving to maintain life upon a diet of polished 
rice. As an experiment the polished rice was discontinued and 
the natural grain substituted. 

The sick in the hospital were fed with the rice polishings that 
had been removed from the refined grain. Rice polishings are 
the outer layers of the rice that give to the grain its light cream- 
ish brown colour. Underneath, the grain is snow white. 

This snow whiteness consists principally of starch ; the pol- 
ishings contain the phosphorus compounds and other mineral 
salts, ferments, vitamines, and nitrogenous products brushed, 
scoured, and polished away to make the grain pleasing to the 
delicate eyes of pale women and children. 

On a sixty days' diet of the natural grain, to which the rice 
polishings had been added, the spread of the disease was inter- 
rupted and complete cures established. Yet, not one of the 
400,000 children under ten years of age who died in the United 
States that year could find a pound of that natural brown rice 
in all the land. 

Still the medical profession needed more evidence than this to 
convince it that when man denatures his food by refining pro- 
cesses he destroys its ability to confer upon him immunity to 
disease. 

So Dr. Fraser of the Straits Settlements and Dr. Aaron of the 



134 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Philippine Medical School set about to prove that when man 
brushes, scours and polishes away the phosphorus compounds 
and other organic minerals present in the pericarp of natural 
brown rice he robs the human family of its requisite supply of 
these elements. 

After this fact had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of 
the physicians in the Far East it was again experimentally con- 
firmed in chickens and later in human beings. 

Finally two groups of railway workers in the Straits Settle- 
ments were employed as a poison squad. The group of men that 
partook of polished white Siam rice of best quality developed 
beri-beri within a period of approximately sixty days, while 
the group that partook of the unpolished rice remained free 
of the disease. 



§ 41 — NATURAL BROWN RICE 

In feeding the two groups of railway workers in the Straits 
settlements, one group received polished white Siam rice, the 
other group natural whole rice of the same kind. 

Every effort was made by interchange of clothing, by personal 
contact and by living in the same house to convey the disease 
to the group that ate of the natural rice. Not a single case 
developed. The process was then reversed. 

The group that partook of the polished rice was put upon 
a diet of natural rice, and vice versa. Within sixty days the 
refined rice eaters developed beri-beri, although they had re- 
mained immune to the disease as long as they ate the natural, 
whole, unrefined rice. 

The results of these experiments were then confirmed in 
Manila by the use of rice polishings in the treatment of acidosis, 
the victims of which showed immediate improvement in their 
condition. 

A recommendation was then made to the Governor-General 
of the Philippine Islands, urging him to forbid the use of pol- 
ished rice in all public institutions. 

In the quarterly report of the Bureau of Health of the Philip- 
pine Islands for the first quarter, 1910, appeared this statement :. 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 135 

"It is hoped by this means not only to eradicate the disease from 
such places, but also that it may serve as an educational factor 
in disseminating knowledge as to the method by which such 
disease may be avoided." 

The Governor-General, June 3, 19 10, issued an executive order 
to all health officers and presidents throughout the Islands, for- 
bidding the use of polished white rice in all United States Govern- 
ment workshops, prisons, hospitals and other institutions. Thus 
it was determined that polished rice was bad food in the Philip- 
pines, although elsewhere in the United States people could eat 
it as they wished. 

October 22, 1910, I received a communication from Dr. Harvey 
W. Wiley, then chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, Washington, 
D. C. 

Dr. Wiley, as you know, was forced to resign from the gov- 
ernment service because of his courage in pursuing food frauds. 
His activities were becoming a menace to many commercial insti- 
tutions. These institutions found able agents to thwart his efforts. 

He said in his letter to me : "We should not even in a small 
way permit a condition of nutrition favouring the development of 
any disease due to the debasement of rice. Rice is becoming a 
more general diet in this country, and the dealer who first begins 
the campaign for pure unadulterated rice will promote the cause 
in a commercial way that will do much toward protecting the 
health of the people." 

Upon the receipt of Dr. Wiley's letter Francis H. Leggett & 
Company, a wholesale grocery house with which I was then con- 
nected, decided to restore whole natural rice to the people. 

It was evident to Theodore F. Whitmarsh, vice-president and 
general manager of the institution, also president of the National 
Wholesale Grocers' Association, that physiologists were beginning 
to recognise that the discarded substances of refined foods were 
essential to the health and well-being of man. 

He saw that any commercial effort to keep pace with these 
scientific discoveries promised to prove a good business policy. 

I called to his attention and the attention of his associates the 
comments of Dr. Alexander Bryce of Birmingham, England, 
and the experiments of Schauman. 

Bryce had said : "It is probable that a daily supply of the 



136 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

different compounds of organic phosphorus is necessary in the 
food, as no proof exists to show that the nucleins, lecithins or 
phytins are capable of being substituted one for the other." 

Schauman had proved that pearled barley and white wheat 
flour not only induce disease among men, but among fowls. 

Whitmarsh determined to make whole natural rice a feature of 
his business, together with whole wheat meal and old-fashioned 
oat meal. Arrangements were made with Texas millers for a 
supply of high-grade whole rice. 

This rice was packed in one-pound cartons, and I was in- 
structed to find a name for it. I labelled it "Premier Natural 
Brown Rice." 

Several thousand dollars were spent in those early days by 
Francis H. Leggett & Company in an effort to exploit the virtues" 
of this rice. Notwithstanding the reform it represented and its 
marked superiority in flavour and nutritional value, the product 
was finally sold as chicken food at a loss. 

The people were slow at that time to respond, and their in- 
difference discouraged Whitmarsh as to the commercial possibili- 
ties involved in any effort to popularise honest food. 

In 1917 he became Herbert Hoover's chief aid in the Food 
Administration, but although I consulted with him in person 
and deluged him with letters, he believed it expedient to avoid the 
subject as a war measure, advising me that "the Food Admin- 
istration could not undertake to educate the people." 

Whitmarsh thus lost the opportunity of an age to become the 
greatest living benefactor of mankind. Had the Food Adminis- 
tration emphasised the scientific truths at hand, the entire world, 
under the pressure which the Hoover organisation showed it 
could apply in other and less important directions, would now 
be profiting by them. 



§ 42 — A SPOONFUL OF GRAVY 

In 1905 Dr. Donald McCaskey was medical inspector in charge 
of a company of Igorot soldiers in Buena Vista, Cavite Prov- 
ince, Philippine Islands. The soldiers all went down with acidosis, 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 137 

or beri-beri; all complained of palpitation of the heart, shortness 
of breath, pains in the nerves, flabbiness of tissue, emaciation, and 
puffy swelling of the limbs. Remember these symptoms for you 
will see them again under wonderful circumstances. The disease 
ended ultimately in paralysis and death. 

When McCaskey was put in charge of these troops he noted 
they had been eating the usual Philippine ration of rice, which,, 
however, had been polished in imitation of the American custom.. 

McCaskey was familiar with outbreaks of beri-beri that had 
swept like wildfire among the Japanese troops during the Russo- 
Japanese war, and he knew that it had been observed at that 
time that such troops as were fed with unpolished rice were not 
subject to beri-beri. 

Numerous drugs had been employed on the Igorot soldiers, 
but as they did not bring relief McCaskey put them on a diet of 
unpolished rice. These are his words : 

"The results were so astounding that inside of six weeks the 
beri-beri sufferers had recovered sufficiently to take the trail and 
hike on their own legs fifteen miles to Manila." 

Later the convictions borne of this Manila experience were 
further confirmed by his study of beri-beri in the Japanese hos- 
pitals at Hiroshime, Tokio, Kobe, and Sasebo. 

Surgeon-General Takaki of the Japanese navy was made a 
baron in recognition of his discovery that beri-beri, prevalent 
among Japanese soldiers and sailors, was not of bacterial but of 
dietetic origin, "due to the loss of certain food constituents, 
notably phosphorus, contained in the inner coating or pericarp of 
the rice grain, which is always removed and discarded in the 
preparation of polished rice." 

Chamberlain and Vedder of the United States Army Board for 
the Study of Tropical Diseases, after studying the very high mor- 
tality of breast-fed infants in the Philippine Islands, reported that 
"these infants recovered from nervous diseases of dietetic origin 
with remarkable rapidity under treatment with an extract of rice 
polishings." This extract contains phosphorus, iron, calcium, 
potassium, and many other bodies of unknown nature discarded 
in the modern process of milling rice to give it a white and fancy 
appearance. 

Vedder, with Strong and Cowell of Manila, experimented with 



138 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

a rice diet in Billibid prison, the hygienic conditions of which are 
reported as almost ideal. 

The result of their experiments has been briefly summarised in 
the following words : 

"It has been generally admitted that the higher the phosphorus 
content of rice the less is the possibility of that rice to produce 
beri-beri. 

"Fraser and Stanton found as an average result in all their 
examinations that unpolished rice contains 0.540 per cent, of 
phosphorus pentoxide. 

"Aaron found an almost identical quantity, his figures being 
0.557 per cent. 

"We therefore emphasise the necessity of carefully considering 
the question of the amount of phosphorus pentoxide which rice 
should legally be required to contain in order for it to be regarded 
as an unpolished rice exempt from taxation in the Philippine 
Islands." 

All these investigators have clearly established the fact that 
refined foods are inadequate to the needs of the living animal. 

Some of them, however, have gone into confusing and dan- 
gerous fields. 

"Give us enough 'phosphorus pentoxide' and we shall be safe," 
concludes one group. 

"Give us enough 'potash' and everybody will be safe," says 
another group. 

"Give us the 'vitamines' and our food, of whatever it may con- 
sist, will be sufficient to our needs," declares another group. 

Another group tells us that "if we consume sufficient 'calories' 
we need have no other worries." 

"A spoonful of gravy is all that is necessary to supply the off- 
setting elements missing in white bread and other refined foods," 
says Dr. Woods Hutchinson. 

None of these commentators seems to realise that it is not 
any one of the elements of known or unknown nature to be found 
in natural food, however important in itself, but rather the com- 
bination of all of them which is essential to health and longevity. 

Short time experiments with any one of them or with the 
absence of any one of them or with any arbitrary combination of 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 139 

________ _ — — ——— ______________ _______________: __________ -_-_-_____-____.___ ____________ _____ 

some of them cannot yield results which will serve as a standard 
for an entire lifetime. 



§ 43 — MEDICINES ADDED TO SUGAR AND STARCH 

It is not the phosphorus lost in the milling of wheat, the 
polishing of rice, the pearling of barley, or the degerminating of 
corn which explains the inadequacy of such refined and denatured 
foods when consumed by man or animal. 

Commenting on the phosphorus content of unpolished rice as an 
index of its fitness for food, Chamberlain states : 

"The determination of any other element which is chiefly con- 
tained in the pericarp, such as potassium, iron, calcium, etc., 
would be an equally good index of the safety of the rice." 

In other words, the food factory cannot remove any one ele- 
ment from the cereals prepared by it without also removing all 
of the other elements. They are so intimately bound up with 
each other that when one goes all go. 

To over-emphasise the importance of ferments or vitamines 
or any one of the mineral salts is to cloud the whole issue of 
metabolism in mystery and darkness. One might as well over- 
emphasise iodine and ignore the vitamines as to over-emphasise 
the vitamines and ignore iodine. 

We have already seen something of the thyroid gland and have 
learned that in health its iodine content is much higher than in 
disease. 

The manner in which iodine, so completely removed from bread, 
biscuits, cakes, crackers, cookies, breakfast foods, cornmeal, 
pearled barley, rye flour, polished rice, pancakes, glucose, table 
syrup, sugar, candy, etc., influences the metabolism of other indis- 
pensable bodies is vaguely hinted at through the experiments of 
A. I. Ushenko. 

Ushenko found that "following thyroidectomy (which means 
the removal of the thyroid gland) the percentage relation of phos- 
phorus to nitrogen in the urine is first increased but then again is 
strangely diminished before death. 



140 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



"The amido acids and purin bodies are increased while crea- 
tinin is diminished. The metabolism of the tissues containing 
phosphorus and nitrogen is acutely disturbed, the synthetic proc- 
esses being mostly affected." 

Here we behold the removal of an iodine-secreting gland af- 
fecting disastrously the interrelations of other parts of the body 
and modifying at once the nature and proportion of elements 
secreted and excreted by those other glands. Iodine in itself will 
not support life. Its combination with other elements is essential. 

Chamberlain declares that Schaumann's assumption that it is a 
phosphorous compound which prevents polyneuritis is not correct. 

"A large number of substances," he says, "have been shown to 
be of no value in the prevention of polyneuritis. Among these 
may be mentioned potassium, chloride, phosphoric acid, either 
singly or combined, potassium phosphate, either acetate or car- 
bonate, magnesium phosphate, lipoids of the lecithin group, nitro- 
gen compounds, such as histidin, asparagin, and various amino 
acids (elaborated in the digestion of meat, eggs, cheese, etc.), 
potassium iodide, thyroid extracts, Romann's salt mixture, cot- 
tonseed oil, egg albumen, or any combination of these substances." 

The failure of vitamines, when consumed without the assistance 
of the other food elements necessary to normal nutrition, to per- 
form the miracle of sustaining normal life and health requires 
little demonstration. 

These vitamines, some of which, isolated by Casimir Funk, are 
complicated chemical compounds, occur as colourless needle- 
shaped crystals with a melting point of 451 degrees Fahrenheit. 
When added to a diet of sugary and starchy foods they will not 
maintain life, although sugar and starch are rated among the 
very highest of the "high calorie" foods, and therefore are looked 
upon by mistaken scientists as the most important of all foods. 

In fact, however high the calories, or however abundant the 
vitamines, unless the other food elements, so wantonly destroyed 
by food refinement, are present the body cannot make proper 

use of them. 

The experiments of Voegtlin and Towels with foods of "high 
calorie" value deprived of their mineral content demonstrate the 
inadequacy of the calorie theory. 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 141 

These investigators found that "an aqueous extract of autolysed 
spinal cord from which the coagulable protein has been removed 
contains vitamines or anti-neuritic substances which cure symp- 
toms of polyneuritis in birds fed on polished rice when adminis- 
tered in daily doses corresponding to four grams of dried cord. 

"These vitamines or anti-neuritic substances, when added to a 
diet of polished rice, seem capable of removing some of the nerv- 
ous symptoms of disease, but fail absolutely to establish normal 
metabolism and the affected birds do not recover." 

This is known. The simplest of natural foods contain all the 
mysterious physiologically active principles required to maintain 
normal health. Still we find scientists blindly rummaging through 
fields of experimental darkness seeking complicated and high- 
sounding explanations for phenomena so humble on the surface 
and so majestic at the core that they have defied all the cross- 
examinations, all the probings, all the analyses, and all the 
theories of man. 

The grain of wheat simply asks to be let alone. The other 
cereals cry out to humanity, "We are sufficient in ourselves; do 
not change our nature, do not undervalue our functions, do not 
manipulate our attributes, do not destroy those potent forces we 
have brought forth from the earth for the food of man." 

In vain shall we seek for peace while we are at war with the 
laws of God. Scientific phrases are not substitutes for the laws 
of life, howsoever they may contribute to the vain glory of the 
eminent members of that august inner circle of established repu- 
tations whose mighty wisdom, ignoring the simplest laws of life, 
clashes with the all-sufficient but hidden purposes of the Creator. 

The shadow cannot ignore the substance; the dream cannot 
ignore the reality; the reflection cannot ignore the flame. The 
lore of the libraries cannot ignore the miracle found in a drop of 
milk or a grain of wheat. 

Real science, in all the humility of true greatness, suggests in 
what it is doing for the welfare of the world an image of the 
divine, but the semi-scientific confusion which has complicated 
the dietary of nations is but a modern Babel. 



142 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 44 — BASES A1STB ACIDS IN FOOD 

Every housewife is familiar with the bubbling and effervescing 
which follow the mixing of baking powder ingredients. Cream of 
tartar and baking soda or baking soda and molasses, when brought 
together in the presence of moisture, froth and bubble. The 
bubbling is due to the elaboration of a gas which was originally 
part of the baking soda bound up in it by chemical bonds. Break- 
ing of these bonds by the acid action of the cream of tartar or 
molasses sets the gas free, which is thus allowed to escape through 
the mixture to be raised during the baking process. 

Baking soda is alkaline ; cream of tartar and molasses are acid. 
Alkaline substances are at war with acids. When they come 
together they fight it out until both become neutral. After the 
fight there is neither alkali nor acid present. When neutralised 
by each other nothing is left but neutral salts. 

The alkalis are called "bases," possibly because they establish 
a base for the operation of the acids. Some acids are feeble, 
others are highly energetic. Lactic acid is one of the feeble 
acids; sulphuric acid is one of the energetic acids. Both, how- 
ever, are neutralised by bases. So are all other acids. 

It is necessary to understand this because acids and bases are 
neutralising each other in the body during every moment of life. 

When the acids manufactured in the body, such as lactic acid, 
uric acid, carbonic acid, phosphoric acid, sulphuric acid, and many 
amino acids, are allowed to remain unneutralised through some 
failure of life's processes they attack the tissues, thus producing 
the result known as acidosis. Acidosis is the curse of all refined 
food eaters. 

This is so because all refined foods are of the acid-producing 
type. The condition known as acidosis may be feeble or it may 
be extremely violent. Between the two extremes it can register 
a hundred degrees of intensity, each of which is given a different 
name by the diagnostician, depending entirely upon the organ or 
gland of the body mostly affected. 

In beri-beri, pellagra, rheumatism, tuberculosis, neuritis, nerv- 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 143 

ous prostration, anemia, and many other disorders, acidosis is 
always present. This means that the acids which develop in the 
body as the result of the processes of digestion and assimilation, 
have not been neutralised. The bases that ought to be present to 
do their work have been thrown away. 

The living cells, tissues and nerves which, in health, are bathed 
in the alkaline fluids natural to them, now become saturated with 
irritating acid secretions which stimulate them to do all sorts of 
unnatural things and which if unchecked actually bring about 
their destruction. 

All this has so much to do with beri-beri, tuberculosis, rheuma- 
tism, anaemia, pellagra, malnutrition, neuritis, nervous prostra- 
tion, and many other diseases that we must begin to appreciate the 
destroying nature of acidosis and how it is brought about. 

We have seen that the function of the food minerals, many 
of which, let it be noted, are bases, are : 

i. To regulate the specific gravity of the blood and other 
internal secretions of the body. 

2. To regulate the chemical reactions of the blood and other 
internal secretions and excretions. 

3. To preserve the tissues from disorganisation and putrefac- 
tion. 

4. To enter into the permanent composition of certain struc- 
tures, especially the bones, teeth, and tissues. 

5. To enable the blood to hold certain materials in solution 
and to assist in their appropriation to the needs of the body. 

6. To serve special purposes, such, for example, as the in- 
fluence of chlorine on hydrochloric acid formation, the influence 
of calcium in favouring coagulation of the blood ; the influence of 
iron in the formation of blood pigment, the influence of potassium 
on the elasticity of the tissues, etc. 

Notwithstanding the relationship of food minerals to the 
phenomena of life, there is not one table of calorie values now 
published in the United States which does not ignore the mineral 
division of foods. All these tables confine their information to 
three heads — the so-called life preservers, "proteins," "carbohy- 
drates," and "fats." 

Now, all proteins and carbohydrates are acid-forming foods. 
When consumed without their corresponding bases they grad- 



144 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

ually bring about a condition of acidosis which prepares the way 
for the development of many diseases. 

There is much evidence to indicate that it is the development 
of acidosis in the body which destroys the body's natural im- 
munity to disease. Proteins and carbohydrates are typical high 
calorie foods. All the scientists are talking about calories. The 
dietitians base all their tables and formulas upon these calories. 
Every hospital and sanatorium in the country talks glibly of 
calories. All of them see to it that this or that invalid or con- 
valescent receives a certain number of calories every day, and 
the foods are selected, as a rule, according to a table, depending 
entirely upon their record as calorie producers. It is the failure 
of the calorie that we are now to consider in order that we may 
grasp the dangers of acidosis and how to guard against them. 



§ 45 — CALORIES AND "SCIENCE" 

Men are still alive who recall the days when horseshoes, nailed 
over the barn door, were looked upon as a cure-all for disease 
and a preventive of evils. Where the horseshoe hung lightning 
would not strike ; the horse would not get glanders. A few peo- 
ple still believe in the efficacy of horseshoes. 

Other men recall the days when buckeyes were the greatest 
friends of the human race. There was an old adage that ran 
like this : "Carry a buckeye in your hip pocket and you will 
escape rheumatism, or if you get it the buckeye will cure you." 
A few people still cling to the buckeye superstition, but scientific 
men laugh derisively at the absurd faith of their humbler brothers 
in horseshoes and buckeyes. 

These scientific men, who so clearly see the mote of supersti- 
tion in the eye of the great unwashed, do not see the beam in their 
own aristocratic orbs. 

They are now giving lectures on "calories." They write about 
"calories." The Government publishes bulletins on "calories." 
Hospitals and sanitaria, that ought to know better, compose 
"scientific" diet lists for the guidance of invalid and convalescent 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 145 

and in all these lists the "calorie" assumes an importance that 
horseshoe or buckeye never enjoyed. 

Professional nurses are talking about the "calorie" theory and 
some of them collect fees for their familiarity with it. 

Even restaurants have fallen under the spell and are imitating' 
the scientific leaders of thought who look down from lofty pin- 
nacles of wisdom and smile indulgently as they witness the spread 
of the silliest fetish that ever cursed the medical world. 

On the 1918 bill-of-fare of one of the largest systems of restau- 
rants in the world, with establishments in New York, Brooklyn, 
Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, 
Toronto, Buffalo, Syracuse, Providence, New Haven, Paterson, 
Atlantic City, Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk, Atlanta, New 
Orleans, Memphis, Jacksonville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, 
Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City, Denver and Los Angeles, is 
published the following: 

"Figures in parentheses indicate calories as computed by an 
expert in nutrition. These show the energy value of the different 
food items and will permit customers to conserve food by ordering 
scientifically." 

Let us separate the calorie scientist from the horseshoe farmer 
or the buckeye bricklayer. 

In the first place we must find out what a "calorie" is and then 
we must show conclusively that it is the easiest thing in the world 
to condemn a man to death while stuffing him with the fattest 
calories found in the grocery store. 

A calorie is a unit of measure. It has the same relation to 
heat measurement as the inch bears to the yardstick or the ounce 
to the ordinary balance. 

If twenty drops of water are so heated that their tempera- 
ture goes up one degree the amount of heat required to send 
the mercury up in the thermometer to this extent is said to be a 
calorie. 

The scientists, speaking of twenty drops of water, describe 
this quantity as a gram. It can thus be seen that the heat re- 
quired to raise the temperature of one gram of water two de- 
grees is two calories and that if two grams of water are raised two 
degrees it takes four calories to do the trick. 

After Barnes, by experimenting in his laboratory, had estab- 



146 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

lished the principle that the relation of heat to energy could be 
expressed with the accuracy and precision of mathematics, he was 
able to prove that if one calorie of heat is produced in a steam 
engine enough energy can be obtained therefrom to lift a load of 
three pounds from the ground one foot in the air. 

A certain beautiful truth lies at the heart of this discovery. 
But as it is now applied to the food requirements of man it has 
become distorted, ridiculous, grotesque. 

The scientists have invented a contrivance which they call the 
"bomb calorimeter" in which they burn up olive oil, kerosene, 
butter, engine oil, bread, gasoline, turnips, benzine, soup, dyna- 
mite, white bread, fire-wood, cheese, anthracite, or any other com- 
bustible matter under investigation for the purpose of determin- 
ing its caloric value. Though there are two kinds of calories, the 
large and the small, we shall employ the term merely as a unit 
of heat measurement. 

Inasmuch as the physical energy of the body necessary for its 
tissue activities can come only from food, an article of diet that 
can send the mercury in the thermometer of the calorimeter 
soaring to the breaking point must be full of possibilities as a 
source of body energy. Thus do the caloricians reason. 

These scientists, while laughing at horseshoes and buckeyes, 
have attached so much importance to this idea that they com- 
pletely overlook the fact that food, to be burned in a body in the 
production of calories, is dependent upon the condition of the 
body to do the burning. 

They have also lost sight of the fact that most of the heat 
which results from the burning of food in the body goes to main- 
tain the normal temperature of the body and that where health 
is impaired through faulty nutrition no number of calories, how- 
ever large, can avail anything. 

These same scientists, in their intense enthusiasm for the rule 
of calories, ignore the fact that the most deficient and worthless 
of all foods are those which strangely enough possess the high- 
est caloric value. 

It never occurs to them that calories cannot and do not put iron 
into the red colouring matter of the blood ; that calories have noth- 
ing to do with the oxidising-agent, manganese, which keeps com- 
pany with the iron of the blood. 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 147 

It never occurs to them that calories have nothing to do with 
the building of a protecting shell of fluorides around the bone 
structure of the teeth or that calories have nothing to do with 
providing the bone structure with calcium and phosphorus. 

It never occurs to them that calories do not neutralise the 
acidity of the tissues or preserve the normal alkalinity of the 
blood and other internal secretions. 

It never occurs to them that calories, however abundant, can- 
not act as a substitute for sodium, magnesium or sulphur in the 
body, or that calories cannot take the place of potassium or any 
of the other mineral salts and colloids which assist in the control 
of the processes of assimilation and elimination. 

It never occurs to these scientists that with normal blood, teeth 
that can grind food, tissues in healthy condition and glands 
that are performing their functions normally, the human body is 
capable of availing itself of the energy bound up in normal foods, 
technically expressed as calories, even though the average person 
never heard of one. 

It is because of these facts and others of still greater significance 
that the superstition of caloric feeding has persisted at the bedside, 
in the hospital and in the sanitarium until there is now no one 
who can estimate the number of men, women and children who 
have died as a result of this scientific superstition. 

It may be an interesting scientific achievement to determine the 
number of calories elaborated in the body by the digestion of 240 
grams of bread, 31 grams of butter, 120 grams of steak and 44 
grams of prunes. 

Perhaps it is also an achievement to determine that smoked 
bacon contains 10.5 per cent, protein, 64.8 per cent, fat, 0.00 per 
cent, carbohydrates, with a fuel value per pound of 2,841 calories 
or 100 calories per gram. 

With such a table, containing the calorie value of all the foods 
on the calendar, the dietitian can devise a theoretical formula of 
feeding which should contain a guarantee of uneventful con- 
valescence for the sick and an assurance of perpetual well-being 
for the healthy. 

Unfortunately for its victims the calorie theory ignores the 
fact that no food, regardless of its calorie value, is burned in a 
dead body and that no food can liberate its calories according to 



148 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

■•- - - . . . . l yi 

the calorie formula unless the organs of the body are actively per- 
forming their proper functions. 

The failure of the calorie theory and the superstitions which 
flow from its abuse are traceable to the lopsided importance at- 
tached by scientists to a mere detail of the miracle of nutrition, 
while ignoring in their calorie enthusiasm the significance of those 
wonderful substances upon which life depends — the salts, col- 
loids, enzymes, ferments and vitamines of food. 

The calorie scientists do not consider the fact that foods are 
refined every day to a degree that removes and destroys these 
salts, colloids, enzymes, fesments and vitamines without changing 
one particle the calorie value of what is left. 

Thus they ignore the growth-promoting substances of foods 
which have no calorie value and those other substances of food 
which, absolutely worthless from the calorie standpoint, are 
nevertheless indispensable to the regulation of the specific gravity 
of the blood, to the regulation of the chemical reaction of all the 
internal secretions, to the preservation of the tissues from dis- 
organisation and decomposition, to the composition of the solid 
structure of the body, to the ability of the blood to hold certain 
materials in solution. 

T. B. Osborne and L. B. Mendell found that animals fed with 
mixtures of refined protein, refined sugar, starch and fat, which 
have a greater calorie value than all other foods, even when 
mixed with inorganic matter in the form of crystallised salts, 
declined rapidly in health. 

The elements essential to health were found under these feed- 
ing experiments in milk whey. Milk whey has absolutely no 
calorie value whatsoever. Yet when milk whey was added to 
these refined foods the decline of the health of the animals was 
arrested. 

Milk whey contains none of the proteins or fats of milk. It is 
the clear watery fluid which contains only the organic salts of 
calcium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, etc., and some of the 
growth-promoting substances found in milk. 

Milk whey might be called clear soup for chemically it re- 
sembles clear soup more than any other food now known to man, 
but it is as ignorant of calories as sugar, in all its calorie fulness, 
is ignorant of life-sustaining properties, 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 149 

Man can manufacture sugar from starch but God has withheld 
from him the secret of making whey or of substituting for it. 

The U. S. Bureau of Standards, through the irritation of some 
of its Ph.D. ornaments, will attack this iconoclastic "nonsense" 
but it will not publicly criticise the data developed by other gov- 
ernment bureaus. One recalls how the Ph.D.'s of his time at- 
tacked the glorious Pasteur. They were on the government pay- 
rolls of France and Germany. Now they are dead and Pasteur, 
resplendent, remains the foremost scientist of all time. 



§ 46 — CALORIES AND GASOLINE 

Clear soups have practically no caloric value. In the restaurant 
table referred to a bowl of vegetable soup, which is very thick 
soup, is given a value of 200 calories, whereas a bowl of oyster 
stew is given a value of 630 calories. 

Clear soup is even less rich in calories than watermelon, a 
whole pound of which has a caloric value of but 50. Clear soup 
is less rich in calories than apples, a whole pound of which yields 
but 190 calories. 

Some foods have practically no caloric value at all as compared 
with oleomargarine (3410 calories), salt pork (3555 calories), 
granulated sugar (1750 calories), refined corn-meal (1635 cal- 
ories), white bread (1200 calories). 

These low calorie foods, ranging in value from 200 calories per 
pound down to almost nothing, include skimmed milk (165 calo- 
ries), buttermilk (160 calories), string beans (170 calories), pota- 
toes (160 calories), cabbage (115 calories), celery (65 calories), 
cucumbers (65 calories), lettuce (65 calories), onions (190 cal- 
ories), rhubarb (60 calories), spinach (95 calories), tomatoes 
(100 calories), turnips (120 calories), lemons (125 calories), 
oranges (150 calories), and strawberries (150 calories). 

Now the Big Superstition involved in the calorie theory makes 
its appearance. 

When refined foods, which have a caloric value so high 
up in the scale that they are measured by the thousands as con- 



150 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

trasted with other foods measured on the scale under the two 
hundred mark, are fed to animals, the animals die. 

If we feed these high calorie foods, such as corn-starch, granu- 
lated sugar, corn syrup, corn grits, corn flakes, cream of wheat, 
polished rice, tapioca, macaroni, white flour and puffed rice to 
animals they die. 

If fresh vegetable juices that have no caloric value at all are 
added to these refined foods the animals will live, but they will 
not gain their normal weight, their strength or their resistance to 
disease. 

Their complete recovery cannot be brought about until they 
are fed with unrefined foods including the parts of the grains 
rejected in the milling of patent flour, degerminated corn-meal 
and polished rice or the substances found in the leaves of plants, 
such as lettuce, cabbage, celery tops, spinach, etc., or in the 
butter fat of milk and in the germ of wheat, rye, oats, corn and 
rice. 

When these cast-off substances, ridiculously deficient under the 
rule of calories, are restored to the diet of the animals they at once 
regain their weight and all their vigour. 

The most important and interesting discoveries concerning the 
growth-promoting substances called vitamines, not found at all 
in the high calorie foods so abundant in America and so enthusias- 
tically recommended for hospital and sanitarium use, have been 
made during the last three years. 

These discoveries show that in milk, in the seeds of grasses and 
in the grasses themselves exist two substances which have no 
caloric value but which stimulate and control the development of 
children and contribute to the vitality of adults. 

One of these substances as we have seen is found in the fat 
of the food and the other in the juice of the food. Their chem- 
ical character is unknown and they have never been separated 
from the food materials with which they are associated. 

McCollum shows that they are most abundant in cabbage, let- 
tuce, spinach, cauliflower and milk, all of which, in the calorie 
scale of values, are away down at the bottom. 

In experiments, McCollum, with Osborne and Mendell, has 
shown that the feeding of butter fat and whole milk promotes 
growth in a remarkable way and that no matter what the caloric 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 151 

value of the food may be, if these substances, that have no 
caloric value at all, are not present, the development of the animal 
will be stunted and its health impaired. 

We know that engine oil, kerosene, gasoline and benzine have a 
higher caloric value than alcohol. 

We know that alcohol has a higher caloric value than sugar. 

The calorie scientists, therefore, ought to refine the stench out 
of engine oil, kerosene, gasoline and benzine as they refine the 
stench out of cotton-seed oil. Odourless and tasteless gasoline, 
having a much higher caloric value than alcohol or sugar, could 
then be put into soup. 

The addition of a teaspoonful of gasoline to a bowl of soup 
would contribute all the calories the professors declare so es- 
sential to life. 

Sugar in war is almost priceless and the average man ought 
to be content, therefore, to put his little Ford in storage so that 
the gasoline thus saved might be used to keep his children in 
health if only some inventive genius would come along and re- 
move its objectionable jitney flavour. 

A speedometer, however perfect in its ability to register the 
number of miles travelled, will get a chauffeur nowhere unless 
accompanied by an automobile. 

A complete set of horseshoes without a horse is of little use 
to a driver. 

The hands of a watch will throw no light on A. M. or P. M. 
unless attached to an efficient timepiece. 

If a convention of scientists assembled for the purpose of 
emphasising the overshadowing importance of speedometers and 
horseshoes as a means of locomotion or of watch hands as the 
controlling factors in our system of measuring the duration of 
heatless, meatless and sweetless days, the obvious folly of their 
conduct would make them ridiculous before the world. One 
might as well attribute the velocity of Niagara's fall to the speed 
of the turbines whirling at its side. 

Yet, in tying their blue ribbons about the neck of the calorie 
and setting the poor thing on a pedestal of glory as the very 
heart and essence of scientific feeding, they have attempted to 
dignify the ludicrous, a feat heretofore never accomplished. 



152 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Those complex substances called proteins are found in food 
and are parts of food. The calorie is not found in food and it is 
not a part of food. 

The carbohydrates (sugar and starches) are found in food 
and are parts of food. The calorie remains still a name and is 
no part of protein, sugar or starch. 

The fats, including those complex compounds known as leci- 
thins, are found in food and are parts of food. The calorie 
has nothing to do with phosphorised fats, with palmitin, olein 
or stearine, all of which are found in foods and are parts of food. 

The ash content of foods is present in all foods except refined 
foods. The ash content when removed in sifting, bolting, polish- 
ing, scouring, desiccating and refining carries with it all the salts 
upon which life depends, all the vitamines which control growth 
and development, and all the biochemic substances which confer 
upon the body in health its natural immunity to disease. 

The calorie is nowhere found among these substances. Yet 
in all the learned treatises on calories no mention is ever made of 
any of these food elements found in ash. 

One might point to a hat or a necktie and say, "There stands 
a statesman/' and be quite as accurate in his comment as is the 
scientist who points to a calorie and says, "There flows the 
fountain of youth." The hat and the necktie at least have ex- 
istence. 

Just how the calorie, merely a notch on a yardstick, has suc- 
ceeded in appropriating the centre of the universe will probably 
never be known, for as its shameless record of pretence begins 
little by little to dawn upon the minds of the unwary, those who 
have stood by so faithfully with the aid of big but meaningless 
words will begin their flight into darkness even as rats abandon 
a sinking ship. 

In the treatment of disease the calorie can be made to' serve 
a noble end but not until those who consult its meaning include 
in their efforts a conscious recognition of the indispensable sub- 
stances it now ignores. 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 153 



§ 47 — ACID FORMERS AND FEMALES 

Sherman and Mettler reported in May, 1912, as a result of 
experiments conducted in the laboratories of Columbia University, 
their estimate of the acid and base-forming elements in the ash 
of the mineral content of forty-seven different kinds of food. 

Meats, including fish, showed a decided preponderance of acid- 
forming elements. The lean flesh of different species, whether of 
young or mature animals of the same species, showed similar 
results. 

The white of eggs was found to be an acid-former. Milk, on 
the contrary, showed a slight preponderance of base-forming 
elements. Vegetables and fruits showed a marked predominance 
of base-forming elements. 

Experiments of several days' duration upon healthy men 
showed that where foods with a preponderance of acid-forming 
elements were substituted for foods with base-forming elements 
the increase of ammonia excretion in the urine accounted only 
for one-fourth to one-third of the acid involved. 

The sulphates and phosphates in the urine, evidences of the 
fact that the sulphuric and phosphoric acids elaborated in the 
body had been neutralised, as they should have been, were not 
considered. 

Sherman and Mettler did succeed, however, in stampeding self- 
satisfied scientists. 

It has never occurred to these scientists that white bread, 
biscuits, crackers, farina, refined breakfast foods, pearled barley, 
corn meal, corn flakes, cornstarch, polished rice, mashed pota- 
toes and refined cereals and sugars of every kind are acid formers, 
and that their constant appearance on the tables of the nation 
is rapidly bringing about a national condition of acidosis. 

Barr declares : "Rheumatoid arthritis is not due to the action 
of bacteria or their toxines or of the toxines developed in the 
intestines as a result of stasis. The cause is a mild chronic 
acidosis which extracts the lime salts from the fibrous tissues, 
muscles, nerves, cartilages, and bones. The extraction of lime 



154 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

salts from fibrous tissues causes it to swell and its vascularity 
to increase. 

"Loss of lime salts causes irritable weakness of the muscles. 
Under such a loss the muscles waste and contract readily. They 
frequently cramp and deep reflexes are exaggerated, often ac- 
companied by rhythmic tremor. Neuralgic pains result from the 
extraction of some of the very small amount of lime present 
in the nerve tissue. With the continued absorption of the lime 
the particular tissues swell and there is effusion into the joints. 

'The cartilages soon become involved and this is followed by 
thinning and erosion. The lime and other bases are so necessary 
to the neutralisation of the acids elaborated by the acid-forming 
foods that they surrender themselves to the actual destruction 
of bones and tissues in order that as long as possible the un- 
natural condition may be tolerable. Even when all the bases are 
withdrawn from our food the phosphates and sulphates continue 
to appear in the urine, showing that the body has had to steal 
the alkaline bases from its own tissue in order to carry on life's 
processes. Surely no one is so blind as to assume that this 
stealing can go on continuously without encountering disaster. 

"The fact that the disease is present chiefly among the poorer 
class and in the female sex between the ages of fifteen and 
thirty-five years lends support to this view," continues Barr, "for 
in these there is a deficiency of lime intake, and during the active 
menstrual period there is a tendency to an increased lime 
metabolism. 

"The relative absence of lime and potassium in the refined food 
of the poorer classes leads to a deficient motility of the stomach, 
and this in turn results in obstinate constipation with acid 
fermentation. 

"Apparently foods from which the lime and potassium are 
largely removed will not provide the intake of these substances 
necessary to normal metabolic processes." 

Herman Hille says, "No vital process is possible without the 
presence of mineral constituents, as these elements and salts 
are generators of energy and are all equally important with 
protein, carbohydrates, fats, oxygen, and water, the great calorie 
producers. The human organism cannot exist without mineral 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 155 

elements and salts in true organic form, as they are indispensa- 
ble foods." 

We begin to perceive the folly of removing the bases from all 
our prepared cereal foods and breadstuffs and from the vege- 
tables cooked at home. 



§ 48 — SALT INTAKE AND OUTPUT 

Herman Hille declares: "From a purely physical standpoint 
mineral starvation is usually the primary cause of disease. Or- 
ganic minerals are more easily utilised than inorganic forms. 
Loss of mineral bodies impairs the food value of foodstuffs, and, 
moreover, tends to make them poisonous. 

"Mineral starvation, regardless of the calorie value of the food 
ingested, is followed by disturbances in the vital processes and 
activities of the human organism, a reduced supply of vital en- 
ergy, pollution of the blood, body juices and tissues, and the 
preparation of a tissue-soil in which parasites thrive and mul- 
tiply without hindrance. Applying these facts and conclusions, 
we find that the food minerals can no longer be ignored by ra- 
tional therapeutics. A rational scientific estimation of the value 
of foodstuffs must include the mineral bodies." 

These statements were made in Chicago, Nov. 7, 1913, at the 
fifth annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical 
Research, in which body it is my privilege to enjoy membership. 

Five years have passed since that memorable meeting, yet so 
slow-moving is truth that no scientific institute or hospital in 
America has to this day attempted to apply its life-saving prin- 
ciples. 

With a hundred other investigators Gautier has demonstrated 
that sodium, phosphorus, potassium, lime, magnesium, iron, sili- 
con, fluorine, chlorine, iodine, etc., are found in a constant man- 
ner in the residue left by the combustion of the animal organs, 
glands and internal secretions. 

"These elements," he declares, "are absolutely indispensable to 
the life of the tissues. The system is constantly excreting them 
and, therefore, impoverishing itself by its excretions. It is, 
therefore, imperative that they should be found in sufficient quan- 



156 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

tity and in assimilable forms in the different foods of man." 

The French have not lacked warning to make them heed the 
folly of removing from their diet such physiologically active ele- 
ments, the reactions and interactions of which control the bio- 
chemical processes of life. 

The subject of mineral starvation, due to food refinement, 
is no new theme. Foster, in his experiments, established the 
fact that mice, pigeons, and dogs fed with meat which had been 
drained of its bases by the action of hot water, even if there is 
added to such meat, together or separately, starch, sugar, and 
fat, do not live beyond twenty to thirty days. Give them all the 
calories they require, but deprive them of the mineral matters 
natural to food, and these animals behave as though absolutely 
starved. 

It should not be necessary to emphasise again the fact that 
the salts are necessary to the carrying on of life's processes, and 
that in such processes they are being constantly removed from 
the body. 

Gourand has proved that these salts are excreted daily in 
health to the following extent: 

Sodium chloride, n to 12 grams; phosphates, 4 to 5 grams; 
sulphates, 3 to 4 grams ; calcium carbonates, .5 gram ; magnesium, 
.2 centigram ; potassium, .4 centigram ; iron, .02 centigram. 

From what source do we obtain them when they are removed 
from food? 

Starling, corroborating the work of Foster, declares, "Ani- 
mals fed upon demineralised or refined food rapidly show dis- 
taste for such food, become ill and die sooner than if they re- 
ceive no food at all. 

"It is therefore evident," he continues, "that the mineral con- 
stituents of food, although yielding no energy in themselves, are 
as necessary to the maintenance of life as the energy-yielding 
or calorie-yielding foodstuff." 



§ 49 — MATERNITY AND TUBERCULOSIS 

The average physician, whether ordinarily interested in food 
or not, becomes peculiarly aroused during the gestation and lac- 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 157 

tation period of his maternity patients, and the convalescent pe- 
riod of all his patients. 

In the gestation period the fcetus acts as a mineral parasite. 
If the mother's diet at such a time is deficient in the vitamines, 
mineral salts and bases demanded by the developing embryo, 
the deficiency is made up at the expense of her own tissues, with 
a corresponding loss of vitality both for her and for her off- 
spring. 

Of all the tragedies due to the ignorance under which food is 
refined this is the most grim and depressing. The elaboration of 
milk during the lactation period without a proper supply of the 
food elements always found in normal milk, is followed by the 
same dismal consequences. 

Here, during these two most sacred periods of woman's life, 
when the human heart goes out to the ministering mother in rev- 
erence, nature is actually asked to operate without the materials 
essential to the accomplishment of her purpose, and so she, who 
supports the heaviest burden of life, pays toll to folly in the 
form of preventable infirmity and pain. 

Referring to the abstraction of calcium salts from the moth- 
er's blood by the fcetus as the cause of the rapid progress of 
tuberculosis, Drennin reports that "inasmuch as gestation and 
lactation both deprive the mother of lime salts, there is conse- 
quently less lime for the process of calcification of the tubercu- 
lous areas — nature's method of cure in tuberculosis. 

"This, therefore, accounts for the frequent rapid rise of tuber- 
culosis following maternity, increasing after every successive de- 
livery, until the underfed mother generally succumbs after the 
third. 

"During the re-establishment of functional activity following 
wasting disease, a deficiency of these compounders of life, the 
mineral salts, bases and vitamines of natural foods, means not 
only slow recovery but permanent injury, depending entirely 
upon the extent to which the refinement has been carried on." 

Weston P. Chamberlain, Major Medical Corps, United States 
Army, cites the conclusions of Wellman, that the foods upon 
which prospective mothers, nursing mothers and convalescents 
are most frequently asked to subsist, such as starchy gruels, 
broths, farina porridges, polished rice, corn meal, tapioca pud- 



158 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

ding, white toast and similar types of demineralised cereal foods, 
are inadequate. 

Wellman reports that fowls fed by him developed polyneuritis 
on a diet of foods such as corn starch, Louisiana molasses, corn 
grits, cream of the wheat, boiled sweet potatoes, boiled Irish 
potatoes, sago, macaroni, white bread, biscuits, puffed rice, pol- 
ished rice, corn flakes, pancake flour, etc. 

In the case of sago, boiled potatoes and corn starch the symp- 
toms of paralysis followed sooner than when the fowls were fed 
on raw, highly-milled rice, showing that the mere milling of rice 
itself is only one of many other food abuses which pave the 
way to disease. 

In view of these facts, Wellman declares it is absurd to leg- 
islate in the United States against polished rice unless action is 
also taken against patent flour, pearled barley, refined rye, de- 
germinated corn meal, corn starch, glucose, granulated sugar, 
etc., all of which are used even more freely in the diet of the 
American family than polished rice. 

Wellman's findings in regard to white bread are of special in- 
terest in connection with Little's reports regarding the occur- 
rence of progressive malnutrition in Labrador, among people 
who at certain seasons live extensively on white flour bread of 
the refined type, imported from Canada and United States. 

Funk, referring to the many recent discoveries in regard to 
the importance of certain minute quantities of certain substances 
in the food, the lack of which entails disturbances in metabolism, 
says : "These special substances may be destroyed by leeching 
out and by boiling, by carrying desiccation too far, especially in 
food for cattle, and by discarding the outer cover of grains, 
especially rice, corn, wheat and rye." 

The conclusions of Funk are elaborately confirmed by many 
experiences in the feeding of horses for vitality and strength, 
and the feeding of cows for milk production. 

In an examination of a number of dairies in New York State, 
New Jersey, and several in Illinois, including dairies where cer- 
tified milk was produced under the auspices of county medical 
societies, I found that cows improperly nourished continued to 
yield milk of poor quality until their tissues were exhausted, 
when they were shipped to uninspected slaughter houses, and 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 159 

there killed and dressed for the retail butcher and bologna man- 
ufacturer. 

Through the demands of lactation for an insufficient mineral 
food of assimilable nature, their tissues like the human tissues 
were actually consumed in milk production which brought about 
a condition of emaciation, anemia and impaired vitality favour- 
able to the development of tuberculosis. The dairy cow suffers 
the same experience suffered by the human family, and for the 
same reason. 

H. C. Sherman of Columbia University, commenting upon the 
calcium and vitamine necessities of man and beast, says : 

"In the Orient where very little milk is available to the ma- 
jority of the people, green vegetables, rich in calcium and vita- 
mines, largely take its place." 

Y. G. Chen, one of his oriental students, reports green vege- 
tables are five times as prominent in China as in America. 

"That children in the Orient," concludes Sherman, "fare as 
well as they do with a very low milk supply, as compared with 
America's supply, is explained by the much longer time during 
which they receive their mothers' milk. 

"In China nursing is continued often for two full years, and 
not rarely for three full years. The child thus has ample time 
to become adjusted to the consumption of a variety of vegetable 
foods before its maternal milk supply is entirely cut off. 

"It is not improbable," asserts Sherman, "that the free use of 
green vegetables with their high calcium and vitamine content in 
the food of the mother may be a factor in her ability to nurse 
her child through such a long period. 

"This must be true because McCollum has found that the 
vitamines of milk are not manufactured by the cow, but are 
taken directly by the cow from her food. 

"Since animals store but limited quantities of vitamines in 
their tissues, yet pass relatively large quantities into their milk, 
it is plain that the milch cow is much more economical and ef- 
ficient as a producer of vitamines than is the beef steer fed for 
slaughter." 

In other words, we obtain from milk, vegetables and whole 
grains substances not found in meat, white bread or refined 
cereals. How is the mother to obtain these substances from food 



160 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

when they are not present in that food? How is the child to 
obtain from the mother substances which the mother does not 
obtain ? 

No wonder maternity, rebuking the outrages imposed upon it 
by the commercial food manufacturer, revolts against the disre- 
gard of nature's laws under which it is forced to suffer, and ex- 
presses its revolt in terms of misery where happiness and health 
should reign. 

"So long," says Sherman, "as we thought of nutrition in terms 
of proteins, fats, carbohydrates and calories, naturally we were 
inclined to assume that a diet consisting largely of breadstuffs or 
other grain products could be balanced by the addition of meat. 
In fact," he continues, "it has long been more or less common to 
think of meat as the animal food par excellence, and milk has 
often been spoken of as a meat substitute, whereas it is vastly 
superior to meat as a source of supply of substances not found 
in meat at all. 

"Meat, except in traces, not only does not contain the salts of 
iron, lime, potassium and magnesium as they are found in milk, 
but it does not contain the 'fat soluble A' found in cream, or the 
'water soluble B' found in skim milk, for which reason it is in 
no manner suited to take the place of milk, green vegetables or 
whole grains in nutrition. 

"The inadequate lime content of meat has long been known," 
Sherman asserts, "and the inefficiency of ordinary meats as 
sources of vitamines has been strikingly demonstrated by Osborn, 
Mendel, McCollum and Simmons. 

"Hence," he concludes, "we can no longer think of milk and 
meat as interchangeable, or of meat as a full equivalent of milk 
in the diet." 

We are beginning at this belated date to realise that food cal- 
cium is indeed one of the mysteries of life, and that without food 
calcium, which is but an organic form of lime, and its associate 
salts and solubles we condemn our little mothers and their babes 
to death. 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 161 



§ 50 — THE ADVERTISING AGENCY 

Medical literature is now crammed with the truth concerning 
food calcium, which, until the publication of "Starving Amer- 
ica" six years ago, was rarely referred to. 

The plain people do not bother their heads about medical lit- 
erature, hence they have not heeded the perils that calcium de- 
ficiency places in their path. 

Milk is the heaviest calcium supply truck, next to whole grain 
breadstuffs, now carting lime in assimilable form into America's 
storehouses of health. 

Next to milk and whole grains the green vegetables and edible 
leaves common to every American garden, are the great calcium 
providers. 

These three forms of food not only yield lime in abundance, 
but they yield the now famous "fat soluble A," and the equally 
famous "water soluble B" in quantities sufficient to promote 
growth and to maintain health. 

They also yield those complex compounds of phosphorus, po- 
tassium, iron, magnesium, sulphur, sodium, silicon and the other 
organic salts of the earth in happy abundance. 

McCollum ranks the green vegetables and edible leaves like 
lettuce, spinach, chicory, parsley, cabbage, etc., very much richer 
in calcium and "fat soluble A" than cereals. Unfortunately by 
"cereals" he means the refined products obtained from milled 
grains which have lost not only their vitamines, but their salts 
as well. 

If we foolishly refined our lettuce, parsley, chicory, cabbage, 
spinach and other greens and vegetables as we refine our wheat, 
corn and rice, they would also rank low in life-giving proper- 
ties. Fortunately we cannot refine vegetables except by stupid 
methods of cookery, so we have few problems of refined vege- 
tables on our hands. 

These 1918 observations upon diet by some of our most emi- 
nent scientists are among the surprises unfolded every day. 

Away back in 1910 the New York Globe through its columns 



162 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

not only permitted me to make these same assertions, but went 
much farther in its characterisation of America's food follies, 
and for eight years continued them daily. 

Nearly six years have passed since the publication of "Starv- 
ing America," a book that inspired many commentators to say 
its author was riding a pet hobby to destruction, and yet to-day 
those same commentators are confirming by laboratory experi- 
ment the conclusions set forth in that book. 

America no longer needs any further facts on the subject of 
nutrition. The archives of its laboratories are swollen with 
facts. What America needs now is the application of them and 
their recognition by commercial food factories and their ad- 
vertising agencies. 

I abandoned the field of food advertising six years ago for 
the reason that all of us were lying about food, not so much in 
malice as through a blind commercial enthusiasm that could not 
be justified and would not submit to disillusionment. 

Advertising agencies then as now were spending millions of 
dollars through newspapers and magazines, in lithographs and 
street cars, instructing the people in truths not true. All of us, 
I am now speaking of the advertising men, were pushing into 
greater prominence the very foods that ordinary decency should 
have inspired us to condemn. 

We were leading the people farther and farther afield. We 
were miseducating them, setting up false standards for them, 
shoving them ever farther away from the fundamentals of nu- 
trition, surrounding them with artificial compounds from which 
all the life and vitality had been extracted. 

We were debauching the American people but we were satis- 
fying our employers, and making millions of profit for them out 
of their highly ornate labels, their decorated cans, cartons, pack- 
ages, bags, boxes and glass jars, the contents of which outraged 
the laws of nutrition now recognised by science as absolute and 
inexorable. 

When I broke away from the advertising camp as it was then 
organised, I was chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the 
New York Advertising Men's League, and chairman of the Vig- 
ilance Committee of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the 
World. 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 163 

When I quit these organisations my friends, almost to a man, 
thought I had been obsessed and had lost my balance. I was the 
stray sheep of the fold, and because my journey was into barren 
lands that promised nothing, none followed me. I addressed 
conventions of advertising men in Boston, Baltimore and Roch- 
ester, and wrote articles on the subject for Advertising and Sell- 
ing, The Editor and Publisher and Printer's Ink, but my efforts 
fell on deaf ears and advertising ethics did not change. 

To-day the scientific laboratories of Europe and America are 
driving all advertising men into confession and the war has only 
served to emphasise the hopelessness of their position. The 
magnificent men who do so much to influence the thought and 
habits of their time are face to face with revolution. 

What benefactors they would be if the vast sums of money 
now passing through their hands were spent in exploiting those 
foods which during three generations in America have been 
gradually abandoned ! 

What benefactors they would be to the whole world in the re- 
construction period now dawning, if they turned away from 
manufacturers of foodless foods and devoted their superb talents 
to the development of foods that will sustain life, nourish pros- 
pective mothers, maintain the health of nursing mothers, develop 
normally the growing children of the nation, and feed the work- 
ers of the world in a manner that would insure for them the 
maximum of strength, life, health and happiness. 

Behind all their errors lie the unnoticed and neglected min- 
eral salts and vitamines against which the food manufacturers 
of America have made their most violent attacks, and out of the 
world's loss of which they have reaped their heaviest profits. 

The war must bring to us a realisation of these truths, and 
all the reform that goes with them, otherwise the blood of our 
youth will have been shed in vain, and as far as preventable 
diseases are concerned the world will be little better off than it 
was before the Hun unleashed his hounds of hell upon civ- 
ilisation. 

If my work on the New York Globe during long years of 
struggle has established anything it has established the fact that 
in the recognition and application of the truths of nutrition, 



164* THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

purely commercial institutions can and do find a profitable busi- 
ness, which the advertising agent can develop if he will. 

Of what use are the food scientists if our food manufacturers 
intend to ignore them? 

Of what use. are our scientific laboratories if the rich fruits 
of their labors are not to be utilised by the industries that feed 
our men, women and children ? 

If science is to be looked upon as merely ornamental, as are 
the fancy labels on so many of our food products, then let us 
do away with science, because as long as it stands before us un- 
heeded it becomes but a mockery, reminding us in vain of the 
things that God Himself has prepared for our benefit. 

With this digression, which I consider timely and important, 
we shall continue. 



§ 51 — COW FEED, HORSE FEED AND FOOD 

In New York City, Armour & Co. discontinued the killing of 
dairy cows because of tremendous losses sustained through the 
excessive number of condemnations resulting from generalised 
tuberculosis. On the killing floor these cows could be milked, 
showing that they had been producing right up to the day of 
slaughter. 

In one certified dairy herd in New York State 124 of 125 
cows were found in a state of malnutrition clearly indicative of 
the unfitness of their food. 

The daily dietary of these cows consisted of : 

Ten pounds beet pulp (the exhausted residue of the beet sugar 
industry). 

Ten pounds alfalfa (good food). 

Two to ten pounds degerminated corn meal and brewer's grain 
(brewer's grain is the exhausted refuse resulting from the pro- 
duction of beer). 

To this mixture was added from one-half to one pint oil meal 
or gluten feed. Oil meal is the residue of the process employed 
in the production of cotton seed oil. Gluten feed is the residue 
of the process employed in the production of glucose. 



MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 165 

Many of these cattle foods are impoverished foods, yet they 
appear on the formula of the certified dairy by reason of the fact 
that they satisfy the modern dietitian's erroneous idea of a "bal- 
anced ration." 

November 15th, 1912, all the cows in the herd were tuberculin 
tested. Two were found to react to the test and were with- 
drawn from the herd. 

May 20, 1913, the herd, having been on the "scientific calorie 
diet" for nearly one year produced fifteen reactors. The con- 
dition was beginning to alarm the owners of the cows. 

In the meantime the stable superintendent had placed his de- 
livery horses on the impoverished cow food. He was anxious 
to make a record for himself and as the cow food was cheaper 
than the horse food, he made the change. Between the fifty- 
sixth and seventieth days the horses on the debased food began 
to show the same symptoms of acidosis, emaciation and anemia 
characteristic of the cows. 

The horses were then put back on whole grains and grasses, 
whereupon they promptly recovered. The cows were continued 
on the same refined diet until a veterinarian, noting the experi- 
ence of the stable superintendent with his horses, declared the 
condition of the cows, favourable to the rapid development of 
tuberculosis, was due to the character of the food consumed by 
them. He immediately ordered a change, notwithstanding the 
high calorie value and the scientific proportion of carbohydrates, 
proteins, and fats with which the certified milk producers were 
being nourished. 

A contrast to this episode, concerning which more will be said 
later, regarding the disastrous results of the use of demineralised 
food on milk-producing cows and mothers, is to be found in the 
experience of David T. Arrell, Youngstown, Ohio, breeder of 
thoroughbred American trotting horses. 

Arrell has bred, broke, trained, and developed prize-winners 
on four points — food, pasture, shade, and stable. He so keenly 
recognised the fact that the quality of his horses, their health, 
vitality, endurance, resistance to disease, and general physical 
perfection depended upon their food that he went so far as to 
provide No. 1 unbleached oats for which he paid, prior to the 
outbreak of the war, $1 a bushel, laid down in Youngstown. 



166 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

As a practical horse-breeder he had noticed that his animals 
fed on unprocessed or non-by-product foods remained prac- 
tically immune to all the equine diseases with which the average 
horse-breeder is plagued. 

As against this observation concerning the vitality of the horse, 
properly fed, officials of the Bureau of Animal Industry estimate 
that from 35 to 50 per cent, of all the milk-producing herds in 
the United States are affected with tuberculosis. All of these 
herds are fed more or less on exhausted or refined foods. 

These diseases of disturbed metabolism, not only with respect 
to cows and horses, but also with respect to the human being, 
are as prevalent as the deaths of 400,000 children under ten years 
of age in the United States every year might indicate. 

Lovelace reports 936 cases of peripheral neuritis in a rail- 
road hospital in North Brazil. More American refined food ! 

Heizer, Fraser, Aaron, Higet, and others, as we have seen, 
have demonstrated the insufficiency of demineralised foods of 
high calorie value in the Culion Leper Colony, the Straits Set- 
tlement, and Billibid Prison. 

Caspari and Mosykowski report practical experiences in New 
Guinea and Berlin which caused them to conclude that human 
neuritis is a widespread disease of disturbed metabolism caused 
principally by refined carbohydrate foods, the high calorie value 
of which is not disputed. Human neuritis is but one of the many 
symptoms of acidosis, but one of the many food diseases. 



FOUR: EIGHT POISON SQUADS THAT 
CRY FOR ACTION 



FOUR: EIGHT POISON SQUADS THAT CRY FOR 

ACTION 

§ 52 — THE MADEIRA-MAMORE CASE 

Let us see how the facts recorded through these pages are 
illuminated by certain human experiences of intense dramatic 
interest. 

The Madeira-Mamore Railway Company in 1914 went into 
the hands of a receiver, after constructing a single track two 
hundred and thirty-two miles long connecting Bolivia with Bra- 
zil. 

The first mile of this railway was laid just ten years ago, its 
object being to exploit the rubber industry of South America, 
not to advertise the dietetic virtues of ripe fruits, or fruit juices, 
or the deficiencies of American diet. 

In the construction of its two hundred and thirty-two miles of 
track four thousand men were literally starved to death on a 
white bread diet. Those who escaped death owed their good 
fortune to the juice of fruits 

Most of the victims of acidosis, or as they called the disease in 
the State of Matto-Grosso, "beri-beri," are buried in Candelaria 
Graveyard, three kilometres south of Porta- Velho, midway be- 
tween that town and Santo Antonio — the district explored by 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

When the appalling history of this poison squad holocaust 
was written by engineers connected with the enterprise all ref- 
erence to the deaths by white bread starvation among the labor- 
ers, after a conference of the railroad officials, was deliberately 
blotted out. The officials thought the public might misinterpret 
the facts at the expense of the country through which the rail- 
road had been projected, and it was decided as a good business 
policy that no mention should be made of the tragedy in the 
various articles written for electrical, engineering, and scientific 
publications. 

169 



170 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

When P. H. Ashmead, chief engineer of construction, him- 
self a victim of white bread acidosis, reported on the number of 
deaths in camp, exception was taken to his figures and his list 
of four thousand victims was cut in two so that in the records 
of the tragedy only two thousand names appeared. 

Ashmead, one of the best known consulting engineers of New 
York, on the day he discovered the first symptoms of his ap- 
proaching breakdown, determined to take passage for England 
on the next vessel out. Terrified by what he saw going on about 
him he had good reason to fear that he, too, was entering the 
shadows of death. 

The dietetic treatment he finally underwent and which saved 
him from interment in Candelaria Graveyard I shall describe. 

H. F. Dose, one of the Madeira-Mamore engineers who de- 
voted three years to the completion of the work started by P. H. 
Ashmead, fortunately made numerous observations and kept in 
close touch with the twenty physicians of the company. Three 
of these physicians, among whom was Dr. Lucian Smith, were 
stricken with the disease but escaped death. 

All the facts of the expedition, interpreted under the light of 
the Kronprinz Wilhelm adventure, a poison squad classic that 
you will soon explore, confirm the instant need of reform. 

The laborers, of whom there were originally six thousand, 
consisted of Russians, Greeks, Turks, Italians, Germans, Eng- 
lish, Japs, Hindoos, French, Jamaicans, Barbadians and Bra- 
zilians. The officers, engineers and physicians were chiefly Brit- 
ish and American. 

The labourers received the equivalent of $2.40 a day in United 
States currency. They were charged by the Commissary De- 
partment an average of one dollar a day for their food. The 
cost of this food, its inadequacy considered, was so high that it 
included the lives of the men. 

A half-pound tin of glucose jam was sold to them for one 
dollar. A No. 2 tin of canned sauerkraut sold for one dollar, 
A No. 1 tin of canned sausages sold for one dollar. The No. 
1 tin contained thirteen ounces. The No. 2 tin contained twenty- 
seven ounces. 

White bread constituted the chief foodstuff of the men. It 
was baked in the camp from patent flour imported from the 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 171 

United States in thousand-barrel lots, and was furnished by 
wholesale grocers in New York City under the most highly ad- 
vertised brands on the market. 

In addition to the white bread (acid-forming) were enormous 
quantities of hard white crackers (acid-forming) and tapioca 
(acid-forming) made from the root of the native cassava plant. 
Like farina, cream of the wheat, corn flakes, toasties, pearled bar- 
ley, degerminated corn meal and polished rice, tapioca is a re- 
fined, denatured, demineralised, high-caloried, acidifying food. 

Supplementing these one-sided units of nutrition were large 
quantities of lard (acid-forming), coffee, sugar (acid-forming), 
macaroni (acid- forming), and xarque (acid-forming). A few 
bags of rice (acid-forming) were also included. 

In the nature of luxuries, sold to the men at enormous prices, 
were such foods as canned pork and beans (well balanced as to 
acid- forming and base-forming substances), canned spinach 
(which the men refused to eat because they did not like its qual- 
ity), canned wieners (acid-forming), canned jam (acid-form- 
ing), corn flakes (acid-forming), oatmeal and condensed milk 
(well balanced). 

The oatmeal and condensed milk were confined to the officers' 
quarters. 

For breakfast the labourers ate white crackers and white 
bread with plenty of black coffee, sweetened with sugar. As 
they had to pay for their own meals, and pay heavily for them, 
they economised as much as possible, believing as most others be- 
lieve, that bread is the staff of life, and in itself sufficient to 
maintain strength, energy and health. 

At noon they ate white bread, white crackers and xarque, with 
more coffee and sugar. Occasionally dried codfish, ham or ba- 
con was substituted for the xarque. Xarque is dried beef, which 
looks like leather. It is packed in slabs or layers, weighing fifty 
pounds each. Each slab is several inches thick, and as dry and 
hard as wood. Before cooking, the xarque was soaked over 
night in water, and then boiled. 

In the evening the men ate more white bread, crackers and 
xarque, and occasionally indulged themselves in a can of sauer- 
kraut, a can of pork and beans, or a can of jam. 

The French, Jamaicans and Barbadians grouped together, and 



172 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

every day made what the others called "sinkers," a sort of heavy 
doughnut composed of white flour, sugar and water, fried in 
lard. 

All of the foods in the labourers' camp, with the exception of 
the beans, which they ate sparingly on account of their high 
cost, were of the acid-forming type. The base-forming sub- 
stances were not only deficient in quantity, they were not present 
at all. 

Acidosis under such conditions was inevitable. 

The officers, many of whom escaped serious forms of the 
disease, enjoyed a larger variety of foodstuffs from which to 
choose, including dried fruits (base-forming), nuts (base-form- 
ing), oatmeal (in itself almost a complete food), and potatoes 
(also base- forming). 

Chief Engineer Ashmead, who ate largely of white bread, 
mashed potatoes and fresh meat, obtained by slaughtering in 
camp an occasional beef-steer imported on the hoof for that 
purpose, began to manifest the first symptoms of the disease al- 
most as soon as the laborers themselves. The fresh meat, of 
which he partook abundantly, and which was reserved for the 
officers' use, did not act as a prophylaxis against the disease be- 
cause fresh meat, or any other kind of meat, lacks the base- 
forming substances so indispensable to the integrity of the in- 
ternal secretions. 

The first symptoms observed among the laborers and officers 
affected were manifested in a tendency to stub their toes while 
walking along smooth roads. The foot would seem to drag. 
After that a slight swelling appeared in the ankles, which grad- 
ually extended upward to the knees with loss of sensation. 
When this swelling was at its height a dent in the flesh made by 
pressure of the finger would remain for a long time. 

Shortness of breath and palpitation of the heart, with tremor 
of the nerves were the next symptoms, after which the men be- 
gan to walk as though they were suffering from locomotor- 
ataxia, with the halting, hesitating, uncontrolled stride charac- 
teristic of that disease. 

As the cases advanced the swelling subsided, and the leg grad- 
ually wasted away, until prior to death nothing remained appar- 
ently but the bone and skin. 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 173 

Before death all the men were completely prostrated and help- 
less. None of the drugs with which the physicians were pro- 
vided had any effect. Finally the doctors ordered "no more 
rice." They thought that rice was the bugaboo because they 
had been reading of the relationship between rice and "beri- 
beri." They did not know that rice had about as much to do 
with the fatal outbreak of the disease which they characterised 
as "beri-beri" as a baby carriage influences the eruption of the 
molars of its occupant. 

As the poor devils gazed in the direction of Candelaria Grave- 
yard where white flour was to disturb them no more, they might 
well have chanted, "Eventually ! Why not now ?" 



§ 53 — -SPURNING MONKEY FOOD 

Chief Engineer Ashmead noticed the development of the dis- 
ease in his own case under circumstances that impressed all its 
details upon his mind. The camp had lost a man in the jungle, 
so dense that once a man got into it he lost all sense of location. 
When lost it was a serious problem to find the way back to camp. 
Ashmead participated in an extended search for the missing man, 
which failed. As night came on he gave orders to blow the camp 
whistle at short intervals until morning, that the sound might 
give the lost man some guide through the heavy brush. 

In directing the search Ashmead had to climb a slight hill. 
When he reached the top he was "out of breath" to such a de- 
gree that he had to stop in his tracks. When he removed his 
leggings that night he thought he noticed for the first time that 
he was "taking on flesh." He certainly was growing "stouter." 
His ankles were "thicker." 

He soon became sure of this, for in a few days he found it 
difficult to buckle the straps of his leggings. Then came the 
consciousness that he was losing his appetite for bread and meat. 
For the first time in his life he experienced a craving for orange 
juice. He had never been fond of oranges until that time. 

On the fifth day following the first appearance of his ankle 



174 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

symptoms he noticed when he pressed the flesh at the ankle his 
finger mark remained. 

Laborers were dying around him everywhere. They had "beri- 
beri," the doctors all agreed. He examined their symptoms and 
discovered his were like theirs. "I've got it too!" he said, and 
the doctors ordered him away immediately. 

He returned to England and on the ship fortunately found 
plenty of oranges. Throughout the entire journey he ate little 
else and after landing in England he continued to saturate him- 
self with orange juice. Within sixty days his heart dilatation 
had disappeared and, except a depressing sense of lassitude for 
the following six months, he was apparently none the worse 
off for his experience. 

Oranges are base-forming, as are the juices of all other fruits. 
The value of fruits consists in their alkaline mineral salts and 
feeble fruit acids. 

Most fruits are rich in potassium and calcium salts, which are 
united with the tartaric, citric and malic acids that produce the 
agreeable flavours of the fruit. These feeble acids are quickly 
burned up or oxidised in the body into alkaline carbonates. 

It has been demonstrated on hundreds of occasions that these 
fruit acids exercise a wonderfully benevolent action upon the 
blood and kidneys. 

In such violent diseases as scurvy, beri-beri, anemia, neuritis, 
acidosis and other morbid conditions in which the tissues are 
bathed in acid secretions the alkaline minerals of fresh fruits 
prove invariably of great benefit. 

The lemon, the orange and the grape are invaluable in such 
disorders. 

The peculiarly pleasing fruity odour of ripe fruits is due to the 
presence of ethereal bodies which completely elude chemical 
investigation. Nobody knows just what they are. It is doubtful 
whether anybody ever will know. 

Artificial fruit flavours, made in the laboratory from coal tar, 
ethers, esters and aldehydes, grossly resemble the odour and 
flavour of certain fresh fruits such as the peach, banana, pine- 
apple, strawberry, and apple. They not only have no nutritive 
value but in many instances are actually dangerous because they 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 175 

are used to disguise otherwise inadequate foods to make them 
more pleasing to the palate. 

Such foods never fool the stomach, yet where there is con- 
troversy between eminent scientists in the employ of commercial 
institutions, and apparent conflict between the methods adopted 
by the Almighty and the theories advocated by certain profes- 
sors, the individual possessed of a little reverence for the things 
God has wrought and a little common sense with respect to his 
own body will decide against the professor in favour of God. 

Ashmead, although he did not know it, was making use of the 
alkaline earthy salts of the orange to his own benefit. 

There was no calcium in the Madeira-Mamore Railway poison 
squad diet. 

One of the suppressed facts in connection with its mortality 
records was the scourge of tuberculosis that swept over the men 
who escaped "beri-beri." 

Both Ashmead and Dose, from whom I have obtained in person 
the facts recorded here, informed me they lost as many men 
through tuberculosis as through the disease the doctors called 
"beri-beri. " All other engineering enterprises, all other large 
contracting efforts, all other army or navy expeditions or explor- 
ing adventures in which, through accident or ignorance, the base- 
forming elements of food are not properly provided, meet with 
the same fate. 

How can we forget that in a modified but none the less serious 
form our American school children, particularly the children of 
the poorer classes, are robbed of the elements of a base-forming 
diet? 

In their limited selection of foods all the following refined, 
demineralised or acidosis-producing products are found: beef, 
pork, lamb, liver, ham, white bread, soda crackers, wafers, bis- 
cuits, doughnuts, buns, rolls, pie crust, lard, lard compound, cake, 
corn flakes, corn meal, farina, tapioca, polished rice, corn starch, 
sugar, glucose, syrups, cheap jams and jellies, penny candies, 
etc. 

The chief base-forming foods are oranges, lemons and ripe 
fruits of all kinds, the outer grains, such as whole wheat, whole 
corn, natural brown rice, whole rye, greens of all kinds, lettuce, 
beet tops, celery, spinach, cabbage, onions, cauliflower, asparagus, 



176 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

the roots of tubers, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, 
beans, peas, lentils, nuts of every kind and unsulphured dried 
fruits, such as prunes, black raisins, currants, sun-dried apples, 
apricots and peaches. 

Egg albumen or egg white, like meat, is acid- forming. 

Egg yolks are base-forming. 

Milk is physiologically balanced, as to base-forming and acid- 
forming substances. 

In accordance with their custom or ability to obtain eggs, an 
abundance of milk, fruits and vegetables properly cooked, the 
children of the poor are saved from the extreme acidosis which 
kills quickly as it did along the Madeira-Mamore Railway. 

So many thousands suffer from malnutrition without knowing 
it, from anemia, from impaired vitality, from lowered resistance 
to disease, from "laziness," and from other serious departures 
from normal physical stamina that end in misery, impaired 
efficiency and untimely death, that it is time indeed the public 
understood the relationship between base-forming and acid- 
forming foods. 

The death of the four thousand railway laborers who built 
those two hundred and thirty-two miles of railway that run by the 
Candelaria Graveyard represent not only preventable loss of life, 
due to ignorance of the laws of nutrition, but they also repre- 
sent tremendous financial losses sustained by the builders of the 
railway who, handicapped by sickness and inefficiency, poured 
more money into the construction of their project — a hundred- 
fold more — than would have been necessary had the diet of their 
men been properly safeguarded and less false economy invoked. 

Men who are not fed properly cannot yield productive energies. 
Sick men or dead men cannot build or dig. Soldiers improperly 
fed cannot long endure under the terrific strain to which they 
are subjected. 

It is a curious but tragic fact that thousands of healthy 
monkeys played around the Madeira-Mamore camp where human 
beings were dying by the score. The monkeys lived, enjoyed life 
and maintained their energy and activity on a diet of tropical 
fruits and nuts. Their presence in the vicinity of the sick 
laborers, who fell as fast as they might fall in battle, seemed 



EIGHT POISON .SQUADS 177 

to be an effort of Mother Nature to speak to her unfortunate 
human children, suggesting a remedy for their misery. 

The food of the monkeys was available. It was base-forming 
food, but the men, who, even as labourers, had conceived aston- 
ishing ideas of ch .inction, had already dubbed it "monkey 
food" In their reluctance to subsist on "monkey food" they 
rejected what would have saved them, even as the sailors aboard 
the Kronprinz Wilhelm rejected and sank the whole wheat 
cargoes of two British merchantmen, notwithstanding their dire 
need of the thousands of pounds of bran and germ contained 
in those cargoes. 

:th respect to his food man has ever been a contradiction and 
a fool. The fixed laws which control the processes of nutrition 
are so simple, so obvious and so actually luminous that a child of 
twelve can grasp them. 

Man alone is the only animal that igr.c: res .hern. The Great 
White Plague and many of the other ills directly traceable to in- 
adequate food, through the use of which the human body is 
deprived of the elements necessary to maintain its integrity, could 
be banished from the human race if the human race would only 
apply to its dietary the fixed laws which control the resistance 
of the sheep and horse to the same disease, and the disregard 
of which makes the hog and the cow a constant prey to it. 

The reluctance of the Madeira-Mamore poison squad to eat 
"monkey food" and the ignorance of the crew of the Kronprinz 
Wilhelm in rejecting foods that would have saved them, have 
done more than merely \)re<ik3XYg down the Brazilian railroad, 
more than merely compelling a German raider to make a dash 
for port with a crew of 

They have brought home to America the importance and the 
significance of understanding its food supply, and of making a 
bek the inroads which commercialism, stupidity 

and false taste- standards are making upon them and their chil- 
dren. 



178 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 54 — SHERMAN, FORBES, HART, MAXWELL, STEINITZ, 
ZADIK, LEIPZIGER, ROHMAN, GUMPERT, EHR3TROM, 
METTLER, SINCLAIR, VOIT 

Does the Madeira-Mamore poison squad really bear any rela- 
tionship to the average American food ? 

Henry C. Sherman, Columbia University, declares : "Possibly 
because the crudity of the views formerly held and still some- 
times met (especially in fraudulent advertisements of proprietary 
foods) tended to bring the subject of nutrition into ridicule, the 
study of the phosphates and other phosphorus compounds in 
food and nutrition was very generally neglected. Recently, how- 
ever, the significance of phosphorus in the growth, development 
and functions of the organism is at last being adequately recog- 
nised." 

Phosphorus was only one of the twelve mineral elements re- 
moved from the foodstuffs of the Madeira-Mamore poison squad. 
The investigations of Forbes, at the Ohio Experiment Station, 
indicate that much of the malnutrition is not due to a low protein 
diet, but to a deficiency of phosphorus and calcium in the food 
supply. 

Here are but two of the mineral elements specially studied in 
the diet of hogs, cows, and American homes. Let us look at 
them, unmindful of the other ten. 

Phosphorus is found in the body as phosphorised proteins 
called nucleo-proteins existing in the cells and tissues. True 
phospho-proteins exist in casein (milk) and ovovitellin (egg 
yolk). In brain and nerve substances, and also to some extent 
in other tissues, the phosphorus appears as phosphorised fats 
called lecithins. Egg yolk is particularly rich in this form of 
phosphorus ; so is the discarded germ of wheat, corn, rice, and 
barley. 

Less highly organised forms of phosphorus are utilised by 
the body as phytin compounds or phytates. Wheat, corn, rice, 
barley, oats, and buckwheat, in their natural unrefined state, con- 
tain phosphorus in this form in abundant quantities. 

Maxwell, in observing germinating seeds and developing chic 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 179 

embryos, found that in the construction of the tissues of the 
growing vegetable or animal organism, the phosphorised fats 
played a most important part. 

Steinitz, Zadik, and Leipziger discovered that these various 
phosphorus compounds could not be substituted one for the 
other. Simple proteins with inorganic phosphates do not make 
a substitute for phospho-proteins. 

Rohman has shown that the phosphorised proteins furnish the 
material for tissue growth. 

Gumpert and Erdstrom demonstrated that phosphorus equilib- 
rium was maintained in experiments upon men when the phos- 
phorus was consumed in the form of phospho-proteins, whereas 
when taken as dicalcium phosphate or as the potassium phos- 
phate of meat the same quantity of phosphorus would not serve 
the needs of the body. 

Hart, in feeding hogs in experiments conducted in the Wiscon- 
sin Experiment Station, found that 1.12 grams of phosphorus per 
day in its various compounds was just about sufficient for the 
hogs until they attained a weight of about eighty-five pounds, 
after which 1.12 grams became clearly insufficient for the needs 
of the animal. 

Sherman, commenting upon this fact, states: "1.12 grams of 
phosphorus would hardly seem a desirable amount for a growing 
child of the same size, or for a fully grown man or woman." 

It was said, as we have seen, that the Madeira-Mamore labor- 
ers died of "beri-beri," although the phosphorus had been re- 
moved from their food prior to their deaths. 

Sherman, Mettler, and Sinclair, through the office of experi- 
ment stations, United States Department of Agriculture, re- 
ported a comparison of the amount of phosphorus contained in 
the food of typical American families. They did not go to the 
Madeira-Mamore poison squad for their facts. They went right 
into the homes of the people and showed that a freely chosen 
diet of our typical denatured food products does not furnish 
much more than 1.12 grams of phosphorus, estimated as 2.75 
grams phosphorus pentoxide. 

These investigations were carried out in a lawyer's family in 
Pittsburgh; a teacher's family in Indiana; a school superinten- 
dent's family in Chicago; a teacher's family in New York City; 



180 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

a students' club in Tennessee; 115 women students in Ohio; a 
carpet dyer's family in New York; a sewing woman's family 
in New York; a house decorator's family in Pittsburgh; a glass 
blower's family in Pittsburgh; two mill workers' families in 
Pittsburgh ; a mechanic's family in Knoxville, Tenn. ; thirty lum- 
ber men in Maine ; a farmer's family in Connecticut ; a farmer's 
and mechanic's family in Tennessee ; thirteen men students, five 
women students and one child in Knoxville, Tenn. ; two Negro 
farmers' families in Alabama. 

The study continued fifty-eight days and took the average from 
12,238 meals consumed by men and 798 meals consumed by 
women. 

Speaking of these analyses Sherman declares : "The results 
indicate that present food habits lead to a deficiency of phos- 
phorus compounds and it is not improbable that many cases of 
malnutrition are really due to an inadequate supply of phosphorus 
compounds." He was cautious in his conclusions, but explicit. 
He did not comment on the fact that in removing the phosphorus 
from natural food all the other mineral salts, colloids, and 
vitamines with which phosphorus is associated are also auto- 
matically removed in the process, because one cannot be removed 
without carrying the others with it. 

His experiments have proved, notwithstanding that in the 
American home many offsetting foods are consumed which were 
not available in the Madeira-Mamore poison squad, the mineral 
elements necessary to normal metabolism are nevertheless de- 
ficient in the typical American meal. 



§ 55 — ELIZABETH COUNTY JAIL 

Next to tuberculosis the most commonly talked of infirmity of 
human flesh is the disorder popularly described as "heart 
disease.' , 

Heart disease, as we know from the insurance companies, is 
constantly increasing in the United States. In all cases of min- 
eral starvation brought about by a prolonged diet of refined food, 
examination of the heart shows dilatation. The heart is always 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 181 

enlarged following a diet of the kind so few of us have fed to 
chickens. 

Malnutrition and "enlargement of the heart" can almost be 
said to be synonymous. 

In the food deficiency disease described as "beri-beri" the 
heart is always involved, just as it was involved aboard the Kron- 
prinz Wilhelm and in the Madeira-Mamore Poison Squad. 

In the disease which confused commentators sometimes call 
"acidosis," sometimes "pellagra," sometimes "edema," sometimes 
"neuritis," sometimes "general breakdown," the heart is always 
involved. 

It is peculiarly noteworthy that the recorded increase in "heart 
disease" runs parallel with the symptom of milling introduced in 
the United States about 1879. Remember the heart of the dead 
frog. You will hear of it again. 

Numerous instances are on record indicating that a deficiency 
of iron, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and the other mineral 
salts, colloids and vitamines always found with these salts in 
unmanipulated milk, butter fat, whole cereals, fresh vegetables, 
greens, and fruits leads to numerous forms of physical disorder 
in which "heart trouble" is one of the constant factors. 

Many cases are on record proving that where offsetting foods 
are entirely missing from a refined food diet, the heart becomes 
involved in from forty to sixty days. 

Many other instances are on record showing that where "off- 
setting" foods are consumed to an extent sufficient to retard the 
progress of mineral starvation, the development of the disease is 
delayed accordingly. 

It is now known that where refined or demineralised foods 
make up a considerable portion of the diet the disease may be 
postponed for years, and then may be described as merely a 
mild or unrecognisable disorder, accompanied by a few not 
necessarily alarming but nevertheless unpleasant symptoms which 
do not, as a rule, cause their victim to become unduly anxious 
about his health. 

Where the diet is abundant and includes a wide variety of 
foods, as in the case of the average business man who partakes 
of a more or less pretentious noon-day meal, while his growing 
family is lunching on left-overs at home, the body seems capable 



182 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of adjusting itself to a considerable abuse of acid-forming foods 
over a long period. The chapters on fatigue poisons will throw, 
in their proper place, a bright light on this dark subject. 

It is now well established, however, that after the fortieth year 
the effects of mineral deficiencies begin to manifest themselves 
in "heart disease," the great fatigue accountant. 

Until 1913 the medical profession in which the "show me" 
philosophy persists as nowhere else, was generally of the opinion 
that the disease called "beri-beri" was confined to the tropics. 

For this reason it was never suspected that the "heart disease" 
of the United States and the "beri-beri" of the Orient might in 
some manner be related to each other, or at least due to causes 
which, while dissimilar in intensity, were nevertheless the same 
in character. 

November 6, 1913, Dr. Herman D. Parker, of the United States 
Public Health Service, was detailed by his superiors to Eliza- 
beth, N. J., to investigate an epidemic described as "jail edema," 
which had broken out in the county jail. 

In this jail, as in many others, the food served its inmates was 
of the typical refined type, consisting chiefly of white bread- 
stuffs, polished rice, boiled potatoes, oleomargarine, beef clods 
and coffee. 

Its prisoners were confined only while awaiting trial under 
indictment, or serving a sentence of less than one year. 

For fifteen years prior to the investigation of Dr. Parker, the 
Elizabeth County Jail, like most other jails, had developed a his- 
tory of periodical epidemics of "jail edema." 

Dr. Livingood, the jail physician, had made a record for three 
years of the mysterious disorder which had plagued his prisoners, 
noting that eighty per cent, of all the prisoners serving more than 
ninety days fell victims to the disease, which the United States 
Government officials finally diagnosed as "beri-beri," but which, 
as we shall see later on, has been described by other groups of 
Government officials as "pellagra." 

In Dr. Parker's Public Health report of the Elizabeth Jail 
investigation he stated : "The fact that the disease existed 
so long without recognition in one locality leads to the sup- 
position that it probably exists under similar circumstances in 
other localities," 



BIGHT POISON SQUADS 183 

"Dilated heart," "heart dilatation," "heart enlarged," are v. 

of the official phi used in describing the physical condition 

of the heart, in all the Elizabeth County jail cases examined. 

rt the theory, that in one of these Elizabeth 

one of 

and the further fact that a dernineralised diet 

of refined I .: the same kind consumed ill such large measure 

children, most of v. ined to 

ale into jail, was finally fixed as the cause of the disease, are 

singular indeed when it is considered that in "pellagra 1 ' and 

"ben-ben'"' and '"'jail edema" and "war nephritis''* the heart is 

always involved in the same way. 

The sign e of this fact is still further ernpi- : when 

d that the same character of "heart disease" is on 
the :-s e in the United '. 



56 — THE BRITISH STEAMER ''JjEU'A 



>; 



ay 26, 1915, the British Steamer Uev.a arrived at Quarantine 
in New York from Cicnfuegos. it had been reported by wire 
that on the . c . ci . trip from Rangoon to Natal, Brazil, eight of 
the crew had died of "beri-beri" and twenty-five more eases /.ere 
on board. 

Health Officer O'Connell boarded the boat v he arrived 

at midnight, and found a condition which caused something of a 
hubbub, although the same condition in more or is . . modified 
form is found all over the City of New 7ork and no hubbub 
follows. 

With Health Department Inspectors Kearney and kallon, un- 
der the au1 Com mis si or.'. . Goldwater, I made 
an investigation of the food of the crew, from which twenty- 
sa.es s :-beri" were taken to the hospital at Swinburne 
r;d. 
Ju .ee>. before, the sailor commenced to feel the 
of their diet, in substance almost identical with the diet 
zabeth County Jail. 
The Dewa was putting on a cargo of at the Keys in 



184 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Cienfuegos, Cuba, when one of the sick men died. Two others 
followed in quick succession. 

The health officer of Cienfuegos, yellow inside, although not 
yellow outside, ordered the Dewa to sea at once. The English 
officers aboard were astounded. They protested. 

First Officer A. Chambers and Steward A. Batterman declared 
they had never witnessed such an inhuman act. 

"What shall we do? Our men need hospital treatment," was 
their appeal to the health officer. 

"Go," was the answer. 

And so, ordered from the dock, they put to sea with their 
cargo of sugar and sick men. 

The health officer did not want to know the nature of the 
disease. He did not want his professional training to fructify 
on the spot. He cared nothing for diagnosis, prognosis, or thera- 
peutics; all he demanded was that the crew of sick men should 
go out to sea and die. 

It was nothing to him where they went, provided only they left 
Cienfuegos. 

It did not concern him what kind of disease the Dewa might 
carry to some other port. 

He didn't know that he had the remedy for the disease at 
hand, and could have saved all its victims. 

He wanted to wash his hands of the whole affair, and he 
washed them, to his ignominy and disgrace, henceforth forever. 

We shall let him pass. 

Unable to obtain proper food or medicine, the Dewa sailed for 
New York. Five more of her men died at sea. 

At the time of her arrival off New York nearly half her crew 
had succumbed. None of the officers was stricken. The fire- 
men and deck crew were the chief victims. 

According to the ship's manual, prepared by a British sur- 
geon, the treatment for "beri-beri" is arsenic, strychnia and salt, 
followed by a diet of white bread and tea. 

The steward was sure the Dewa's crew was suffering from 
"beri-beri" so, although he had no strychnia or arsenic aboard, 
he prescribed plenty of white bread and tea. 

Upon their arrival they were taken to the hospital for more 
white bread and tea. 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 185 

The daily food of the crew prescribed by the Government of 
India was as follows : 

Natural brown rice ("ballam"), one pound, six ounces. 

Wheat flour ("morda"), unbolted, ten ounces. 

Dried peas ("dal"), six ounces. 

Buffalo grease ("ghee"), two ounces. 

Salt, one-half ounce. 

Curry stuffs, one ounce. 

Dried fish ("bhetki"), four ounces. 

Potatoes and onions, six ounces. 

Tamarinds, one ounce. 

Tea, one-fourth ounce. 

Sugar, one and one-half ounce. 

Lime juice, one ounce. 

The fish aboard was called "bhetki." 

The "morda" was baked into cakes ("chupattee") with water 
and "ghee." 

This diet would have prevented neuritis, pellagra, scurvy, 
edema, beri-beri or acidosis, but the supply of natural brown rice 
ran low. The peas were exhausted, and in their place the 
steward bought a quantity of white American flour and white 
American polished rice. 

The crew divided themselves into two groups. One group 
would not eat the polished rice nor the white flour. The other 
group would not eat the natural brown rice. 

None of the sailors who lived on the natural brown rice 
contracted the disease, in spite of the fact that the rice was 
musty. 

I was face to face with the fact, not the theory, that whole 
unpolished rice, even when musty, will support life for sixty 
days, but on a diet of white flour for the same time, Man, regard- 
less of his colour, will collapse. 

I asked the steward what had become of the tamarinds. 

"We did not stow enough of them," he replied. "Oh, if we 
only could have had some dates or other fruit." 

He knew nothing of the base-forming quality of fruit, but he 
craved tamarinds and dates. Dates would have prevented the 
"beri-beri." 

As a rule, even before the war, when dates were plentiful, 



186 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

the people looked upon them as luxuries, not as a medicinal 
food. 

If the people of the world knew the value of the date, raisin, 
or of any other fruit, they would not only marvel over it as 
Moses did, but they would have it in their homes all the time. 

The steward of the Dewa yearned for dates, but he could not 
get them on the open sea. 

The American people, able at all times to put their hands on 
large quantities of fruit, eat sparingly of it — alas ! too sparingly. 

Looking at the date, as a mere fact, we find so many wonders 
that our American indifference toward it cannot be explained. 

The date, like all other fruit, has saved lives wherever men have 
existed. 

The instincts of the Dewa's steward rah true. It did not occur 
to him that the date will grow where nothing else will grow. 
All that he knew was that it did not grow at sea, and that he 
could not get it there. 

The date palm in the hot deserts actually converts the dead 
sands that doze in the sweltering sun into a food, the flavour of 
which is not rivalled in the food world, and the value of which 
is the astonishment of the chemical laboratory. 

Moses knew what he was about when he gave especial care 
to fruit trees. He forbade the Jews to cut fruit trees down 
even on their enemies' land. In this respect also he was unlike 
the Kaiser. 

The Dewa's steward, when I told him of Moses's attitude to- 
ward fruit, and explained to him what fruit would have done for 
his sick crew, leaned dejectedly against the rail of the ship and 
said : "Moses was a wise man." 

Even the heathens knew the value of fruits, inventing special 
gods to protect them, such as Pomona, Vertumnus, Minerva. 

The palm tree on which the date grows was common among 
the Hebrews. They extracted honey from its fruit. They made 
bread and cakes from it. 

Dried and reduced to flour, caravans in the desert lived on it, 
but they did not sift it through gritz gauze or bolt it through 
silk cloth to take the life out of it for refinement's sake. 

The Romans cherished it as the most aristocratic ingredient in 
many of their most famous dishes. 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 187 

Our modern victims of folly are not blessed with any such 
enthusiasm. They are simply "modern." 



§ 57 — THE MISSISSIPPI PENITENTIARY POISON SQUAD 

About the time the symptoms of mineral starvation were mani- 
festing themselves aboard the converted German cruiser Kron- 
prinz Wilhelm on the high seas, physicians and surgeons con- 
nected with the federal public health service were undertaking 
a series of tests to demonstrate that pellagra was caused by im- 
proper food, and that the elimination of the cause would cure 
the disease. 

An exhaustive review of facts relating to the diet of working- 
men's families, particularly among the poorer classes, resulted in 
the disclosure that pellagra always followed a diet rich in car- 
bohydrates (refined sugars and starches) and that it had a ten- 
dency to show itself wherever there was a rise in the cost of 
food, thus making it harder for the poorer families to obtain a 
nourishing diet. 

In the facts compiled, not one reference was made to the 
necessity of substituting whole corn meal undegerminated, either 
white or yellow. 

No reference was made to the fact that whole wheat meal con- 
verted into bread and breadstuffs, instead of the white bread 
and biscuits of the south, would prevent pellagra. 

No reference was made to the fact that natural brown rice, 
freshly milled, so easily obtainable in the south, should be sub- 
stituted for the polished and demineralised product extensively 
consumed among the poor. 

No reference was made to the fact that all these foods could 
be obtained at a price even cheaper than their refined, demin- 
eralised, and inadequate commercial substitutes, consumed in such 
enormous quantities throughout the United States. 

Dr. Joseph Goldberger, who was among those to visit the 
stricken crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm, April, 191 5, had been 
seriously concerned with the obvious inadequacy of the diet 
of the thousands of victims of pellagra every year in the south. 



188 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Accordingly, three experiment stations were established, two at 
Jackson, Miss., and the third at the Georgia State Sanatorium. 

In his preliminary study of 200 cases during the spring and 
summer of 19 14, Goldberger had come to the conclusion that 
"carbohydrate foods" are responsible for pellagra, and, accord- 
ingly, he urged a reduction in the diet of starchy foods in the 
treatment of the disease. 

Then came the sensational poison squad experience in which 
twelve convicts, six of whom were murderers, risked their lives 
in the interests of medical science in order to enable Goldberger 
to prove his theory that pellagra is directly due to the consump- 
tion of inadequate food. 

These victims in the Mississippi penitentiary were fed exclu- 
sively on degerminated and demineralised corn products. 

November 2, 19 15, after six of the men had developed pellagra 
in a pronounced form, and two others had shown definite symp- 
toms of the disease, Governor Brewer pardoned them all. 

The authorities had kept the test as secret as possible. They 
feared that relatives of the prisoners who submitted to the 
ordeal, might invoke the habeas corpus or resort to some other 
legal device to rescue the victims of the experiment. 

Several of the convicts attempted suicide during the test. Two 
of them, Guy R. James and D. W. Pitts, made formal application 
to the penitentiary board to be sent back to their cells in order 
that they might serve their life terms in preference to continuing 
further the sufferings they underwent. 

One of the pardoned convicts, W. H. English, describing his 
experience on the day following his pardon, stated: 

"For the first few months I felt only lazy and stupid. Along 
about July 1 I began to lose weight. At that time I tipped the 
scales at 167 pounds. Now I weigh 118 pounds. When Gov- 
ernor Brewer pardoned us yesterday he told us we could remain 
in the penitentiary and be cured by a 'balanced diet' treatment. 
One might think this invitation would have been accepted by 
some, but not even one of the eleven accepted it. The twelfth 
had broken down two months before and was sent home." It 
was reported that he had committed suicide. 

As a result of the pellagra poison squad experience the follow- 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 189 

ing remedy, which in no manner refers to whole grains or un- 
refined cereals or adequate breadstuff's, was set forth : 

"An increase in the diet of fresh animal and leguminous 
foods." 

"Ownership of milk cow and increased milk production for 
home consumption." 

"Poultry and egg raising for home consumption." 

"Stock raising." 

"Reduction in the diet of the carbohydrate or starchy foods." 

"Diversification and the cultivation of food crops, including an 
adequate pea patch, in order to minimise the disastrous effects of 
a crop failure and to make food cheaper and more readily 
available." 

"Make the other class of foods cheap and readily accessible." 

"Improve economic conditions, increase wages and reduce un- 
employment." 

To these recommendations with which it will be difficult if not 
impossible to conform, the following may some day be added: 

Eat the foods already at hand, but eat them in their natural, 
unrefined state. (Not difficult.) 

Grind the whole corn and consume it in the form of corn 
bread, corn pone, corn cake, corn porridge, containing all of the 
corn. (Not difficult.) 

Adopt the same principle with regard to wheat, barley and 
rice. (Not difficult.) 

Eat something green every day and make sauces or soups of 
the waters in which vegetables are boiled, instead of throwing 
them down the waste pipe or into the sink. (Not difficult.) 

Forget the fresh meat if you can't get it and use milk and 
eggs, beans, peas and lentils instead. (At least not as difficult 
as getting and keeping a cow.) Economical and sensible. 

But a mere fragment of the real value of the pellagra poison 
squad has been given to the world. Through faulty interpreta- 
tion the sufferings of men, so severe that their very violence 
caused some of them to attempt suicide, have been in this experi- 
ment almost lost to their fellows, even as the Kronprinz Wilhelm 
experience was lost to humanity. 

According to the reports given out the men were fed collards, 
hominy, corn bread, corn grits, fried mush, biscuits, brown gravy, 



190 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

rice, coffee, and sugar. Nothing was said of the fact that hominy 
is a demineralised, degerminated, refined corn product; that 
corn bread is the same kind of a demineralised corn product ; that 
fried mush, made from degerminated corn meal or grits is the 
same kind of a refined corn product, and that it was not because 
they were corn, but because they were bolted corn, only part of 
the corn, that a diet of such foods resulted in disastrous conse- 
quences, which consequences, in this case, were aptly named 
"pellagra," just as they would have been named something else 
had they been named by another set of scientists. 



§ 58 — WATERY TISSUES OF THE HOG, PASTY COMPLEXION 

OF THE HUMAN 

Before reviewing the most startling poison squad experiment 
of all time it will be well to emphasise the significance of the 
Madeira-Mamore tragedy and the Elizabeth County Jail episode 
by checking up on the feeding of sheep and hogs. 

Figures provided by the United States Bureau of Animal 
Industry show that less than three one-hundredths of I per cent, 
of all the sheep killed in one federal inspected slaughterhouse 
during a period of twelve months ended November I, 1913, had to 
be condemned on account of disease ; whereas in another estab- 
lishment of the same kind one-sixth of all the hogs slaughtered 
during the same twelve months had to be condemned. 

This means that for every one sheep found to be diseased 
528 hogs were found to be similarly affected. This vast differ- 
ence, startling in its suggestiveness, between the sheep and the 
hog, in regard to their respective resistance to disease, draws 
attention to the difference between the methods whereby they are 
fed. 

There are hundreds of examples of the manner in which the 
condition of an animal's tissue tone and general health are af- 
fected by its food. 

The bureau of Animal Industry, Bulletin 25, issued December 
16, 1 91 3, reports on the fact that cattle fattened on an artificial 
diet of cottonseed cake and beet pulp, notwithstanding the pres- 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 191 

ence of silage in their food, lost by shrinkage while still alive 
more than twice as much weight as cattle fed on the natural diet 
of grasses and the seeds of grasses, during transit from point of 
origin to destination. 

September, 1900, Dr. Oscar Liebreich of the Imperial Board 
of Health, Berlin (Geheimer Medicinalrath, Ordenlicher Profes- 
sor der Heilmittellehre und Direktor des Pharmakologischen In- 
stituts des Konigischen Universitat, Berlin), made the following 
report on the use of coloring matter by sausage makers : 

"It is now close upon half a century since the coloring of pale- 
colored sausages was introduced. Many fanners and cattle 
breeders have now adopted the method which enables them to 
enhance the weight of their cattle and hogs. Instead of feeding, 
as used to be done, with leguminous substances with bran, pota- 
toes, skim milk, etc., the animals now get all sorts of so-called 
strengthening feeds : Farmhouse refuse (tankage, garbage, by- 
products of breweries, cottonseed meal, exhausted pulp) and the 
like. 

"This method of fattening produces a considerable modifica- 
tion in the composition of the flesh. While under the old system 
of feeding, animals with solid, substantial, muscular flesh, rich 
in colouring substance, were produced, the flesh formed by 
present artificial feeds is very fat, contains a great deal of water, 
and is very poor in colouring substance. 

"The old system of feeding produced the fleshy pork; the 
new system produces fat pork. 

"While formerly sausages were of a good red colour, they 
are now always pale. Hence the dye must be employed where 
people want the true character of modern pork to be disguised 
to resemble what it should be." 

Here we have the rapid shrinking of the water-logged tissues 
of the artificially fed cattle and the anemic flesh of artificially 
fed hogs to teach us the dangers of refined food in the produc- 
tion of enfeebled vitality and disease. 

The sheep still feeds itself as it has fed for thousands of 
years. It follows nature's instinct. It knows nothing of the 
artificial by-products upon which dairy cows and hogs are 
crammed. In consequence it resists nearly all diseases and main- 
tains a state of normal health. 



192 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

In 1913 M. B. Ravenel, professor of bacteriology of the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, made an examination of conditions in the 
slaughter houses of Wisconsin and other states. In addition to 
the many other diseases with which he found the hog to be 
cursed, he declared in his report : 

"Twenty per cent, of the average lot of hogs brought to slaugh- 
ter are tuberculous. These hogs do not develop the disease within 
themselves, but contract it by feeding on by-products of cream- 
eries and following tuberculous cows engaged in the production 
of milk. ,, 

Here we have a startling similarity between the pale, watery 
tissues of the hog, including the diseases to which such de- 
vitalised tissues offer little or no resistance, and the pale com- 
plexion, anemia or hemoglobin deficiency of the human be- 
ing. 

Dr. Rolf Wilson is responsible for the following statement, 
published in the Medical Times, January, 1914: "R. L. Bab- 
cock, Chicago, rarely finds in city dwellers the hemoglobin above 
90. I believe the prime reason for this," he says, "is the 
demineralisation of the food now put upon the market." 

In the deficiency of certain food minerals in the diet of the 
hog the same results are noticed as those observed in the human 
animal under similar conditions of mineral deficiency. We shall 
now see how this similarity has asserted itself in the most extraor- 
dinary poison squad experiment of history. 



§ 59 — the "kronprinz wilhelm" poison squad 

On April nth, 1915, the Germans brought to the shores of 
America a poison squad, the first real poison squad of history. 
There never was a poison squad like it. There probably will 
never be another. All the so-called scientific short-time feeding 
experiments, and all their misleading results were put to shame 
by the experience of the Kaiser's sailors. 

Yet, to this day, the governments of the United States, Great 
Britain and France have persistently ignored the lesson unwit- 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 193 

tingly taught by the Germans. It is doubtful if the Germans 
themselves have profited by that lesson. 

April nth, 191 5, the converted cruiser Kronprinz Wilkelm was 
discovered lying at anchor in the James River, off Newport News, 
to which port she had followed her raiding predecessor the Prinz 
liitcl (Attila) Friedrich. 

After sinking fourteen French and British merchantmen, she 
had successfully run the gauntlet that brought her to her safe 
retreat in American waters. No one in the world dreamed that 
Sunday morning that the Kronprinz Wilhelm would some day 
carry American troops to France. 

We are not concerned with the raider's exploits before she 
flew the Stars and Stripes, but with the consequences of her 
marvellous experience under the German flag. 

When she put into Newport News she was stricken with a 
disease the doctors called "beri-beri." 

One hundred and ten of her crew of five hundred were 
prostrated. The others were on the verge. Throughout the news- 
papers of the United States was spread the report that the 
sailors were the victims of eating polished rice. 

Government experts, state experts, specialists in private prac- 
tice, and great numbers of eminent health officers and physicians, 
hastened to the ship to hold consultations over the curious disease. 
They all pronounced it beri-beri and they all insisted it was 
caused by eating polished rice. 

The medical magazines had been filled with discussions of 
beri-beri, always associating the disease with a diet of polished 
rice. Reri-bcri and polished rice had become "scientific" twins. 
It was orthodox to think of them together, hence the opinion of 
the experts was sound enough to satisfy the world. 

When, April i6th, 1915, I climbed up the side of the vessel (I 
will tell you how I got there later), I was admitted to the con- 
sultation of twelve doctors and officers who were discussing 
the queer malady, its cause and its possible remedy. "Surely 
it is beri-beri," they were saying, "but how does beri-beri differ 
from pellagra, and how does pellagra differ from scurvy, and 
how does scurvy differ from neuritis, and how does neuritis differ 
from pernicious anemia, and why is the disease not scurvy instead 



194 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of beri-beri, and why is it not pellagra instead of either?" and so 
on and so on. 

There they sat, this group of mystified scientists, in the dining- 
room over the grand salon of the once famous North German 
Lloyd Transatlantic liner. The luxurious salon itself had been 
filled with coal. The ship's sumptuous cabins de luxe had been 
filled with coal. 

Mystery, tragedy, contradiction and disease brooded in the 
heart of that once palatial ship. 

The bewilderment of the doctors was not wonderful, for the 
Kronprinz Wilhelm herself was but a symbol of the bewilder- 
ment of the whole world. 

I had no business on that ship. I had been ordered to keep 
off. I had exhausted every conceivable device and pulled every 
wire of influence. I had appealed to Washington in vain. I 
tried to act as a messenger for a ship chandler. 

I had tried all the prominent physicians of Newport News, 
the Collector of Customs, the politicians. Everywhere I received 
the same answer. Journalists were barred from that ship by an 
edict that recognised no exception. The order of von Bernstorff 
was sweeping and from it there was no appeal. 

In despair I stood afar off and watched the sombre grey hulk 
with her four grey smokestacks and her four grey guns. There, 
locked up in her sullen heart, was a great truth of unrecognised 
significance which America must soon learn or for her con- 
tinued ignorance of which pay a dismal price. 

I was barred from that truth. I was not permitted to pass 
it along. I was not a member of the inner circle of established 
reputations. Scientific bigotry and narrow ethics were keeping 
me out. I had no right to be interested in science yet I had 
given more study to the causes of malnutrition and had addressed 
more physicians on that one subject than perhaps any other man 
in America. 

Why not outwit the pretence and the superiority and get 
aboard in the guise of some eminent person? Truth belongs to 
all. There is no monopoly of it. In its presence the strategies 
of war dwarf in dignity to the vanishing point. Strategy was the 
last resort. 

It worked. Through its operation I found the truth and in pos- 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 195 

session of it am able to contradict the scientific opinions that then 
swept across the country and that still continue to pose as truth. 
Polished rice had no more to do with the disease then ravaging 
the crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm than horseshoes have to do 
with thunderbolts. 

In addition to finding the truth I found myself in an embar- 
rassing, a trying, a thrilling predicament. I had engaged the best 
launch available and in dignity was taken alongside the cruiser, 
where I presented the card of a celebrated New York physician 
to the officer who asked me what I wanted. I requested him 
politely to deliver "my card" to the ship's surgeon. 

In five minutes I was summoned aboard and ushered through 
long shady passages covered with German inscriptions and photo- 
graphs of the Emperor into the consultation room. 

Twelve men, seated around a great table, arose to greet the 
"eminent physician." The ship's surgeon, Dr. E. Perrenon, and 
her officers, saluted me in semi-military fashion. Then the dignity 
of my entrance was exploded as if by a bomb. 

A prominent health officer, one of the group of consulting 
scientists, recognised me. "Why," he exclaimed in a loud voice, 
"here is McCann of the New York Globe" It seemed that I 
had never heard such a loud voice in all the world. It sounded 
like a volley from the cruiser's four-inch guns. 

Turning to the ship's officers, he continued, his voice seem- 
ingly louder than before, "Mr. McCann is a representative of a 
New York newspaper." Every word was separate and distinct. 
The entire sentence was full of barbed-wire and bayonets. Turn- 
ing to me before any of the others could speak, he finished his 
assault by saying: "Where did you get the card you sent in? 
What is its meaning?" 

Everybody bristled. An impostor had been discovered aboard 
the ship of science. Perhaps his mission was hostile. At any 
rate he was a newspaper man and newspaper men were anathema. 
The men remained standing, awaiting an explanation. I gave it 
to them. Some of them may be thinking of it yet. 

It was no time for soft speeches. It was no time for ignorance 
in high places. It was no time for shrinking courtesy. The 
scientific gentlemen heard what was said and for the benefit of 



196 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

the learned and superior persons who talk glibly of beri-beri 
and polished rice, it is all set down here. 

I had no apology for my words and no time to waste. If there 
was beri-beri on that ship there were thousands of cases of the 
same disease in every State in the Union, and there was no earthly 
reason why a group of scientists should suddenly become 
hysterical over a condition on a German cruiser while lyine at 
their own feet at home there were hundreds of such conditions 
which the scientists ignored. 

No man interrupted me. I was as much shocked at their 
silence as they were at my impertinence, so I kept on and re- 
minded them of many of the neglected truths of the diseases of 
dietetic origin. 

Finally the ship's surgeon abandoned his seat at the table and 
advanced toward me. He extended his hand. He smiled. From 
that moment I knew we were friends. "I will hear all you have 
to say after the others have departed," he said. 

When the others had boarded a launch and were taken ashore, 
he retired with me to his headquarters, and after an hour's 
conversation sent for the ship's cook. The three of us had it out 
together. 

The polished rice explanation was the first lie to vanish. Pol- 
ished rice was not responsible for the pathetic condition of the 
crew, for the reason that polished rice never appeared oftener 
than once in twenty-one meals. 

But what did the men eat ? The answer to that question is one 
of the most important issues now confronting America, Great 
Britain and France. 



§ 60 — TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIVE DAYS! 

After leaving Hoboken, August 3rd, 19 14, the German cruiser 
roamed the seas for two hundred and fifty-five days, subsisting on 
supplies taken from French and British merchantmen before she 
bombed them. During this period of two hundred and fifty-five 
days she touched at no port, depending entirely for coal and 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 197 

provisions on her raiding ability and her speed in escaping 
French and British warships. 

The cruiser's troubles began September 4th, 19 14, when she 
sank the British steamer Indian Prince, bound from Bahia to 
New York, after seizing all her coal, meat, white flour, oleo- 
margarine, canned vegetables, coffee and soda crackers. Her 
own supply of fresh meat was nearly exhausted when the Indian 
Prince crawled into view. The white flour was looked upon as 
manna from heaven. A month passed. 

October 7th, 191 7, the British refrigerator steamer La Corren- 
tina, bound from Argentina to London with 5,600,000 pounds of 
fresh beef, was sighted. The Germans ran her down and took 
from her enough fresh meat to supply her needs for several 
years. She crammed her own spacious refrigerators with hind 
quarters and ribs. She corned 150,000 pounds of rounds in 
addition to her supply of the chilled and frozen quarters. 

She stowed enough meat to give each member of her crew as 
much as three pounds a day for an entire year. She also seized 
all the La Correntina's butter, white flour, tea, biscuits, sweet 
crackers, potatoes, canned vegetables, and her meagre supply of 
fresh vegetables before blowing her up. Six weeks passed. 

November 21st, 1914, she captured the French bark Anne De 
Bretagne on her way from Fredrickstad to Sydney. This boat, 
before she was blown up, surrendered all her coal, white flour, 
butter, potatoes, canned vegetables, champagne and dried peas. 
The rest of her provisions went to the bottom. 

The Germans had all the meat and bread and oleomargarine 
they could eat. With their twenty-six knots an hour they knew 
they could continue to scour the seas until the end of the war, 
sinking vessel after vessel, and obtaining coal and provisions as 
long as they kept their health. 

Fresh meat, bread, and oleo and boiled potatoes are generally 
assumed to be life-sustaining foods. The Germans unwittingly 
had commenced to explode that theory. 

December 4th, 1914, after she had been out four months, she 
sank the British steamer Bellevue, bound from Liverpool to South 
America. From this ship she secured four thousand tons of coal 
and an immense shipment of sweet biscuit with all the white 
flour, butter and canned vegetables the Englishman carried. 



198 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

The subtle, slow-moving influence of their refined and demin- 
eralised diet had not yet broken the sturdy Germans. They had 
no suspicion that the fruits of their raids were actually eating into 
their lives. 

On the afternoon of the same day she sank the French steamer 
Mont Agel, bound from Marseilles to South America. Before 
blowing her up she confiscated all her butter, white flour and 
potatoes. Each raid, while supplying tons of food, was intensi- 
fying the chronic acidosis that was finally destined to overcome 
her crew and compel her to make her last dash through darkness 
with all lights out and a full head of steam, into a neutral port. 
She would be out there yet sinking the Allies' ships if it were not 
for her typical American meals, plenty of fresh meat, mashed 
potatoes, canned vegetables, white bread, butter, sweet cakes and 
coffee. 

Christmas of 19 14 passed quietly, and three days later, Decem- 
ber 28th, she sank the British steamer Hemisphere, bound from 
Hull to Rosario, obtaining five thousand tons of coal with a great 
quantity of white flour, butter, sweet cakes, potatoes and canned 
vegetables. 

January 19th, 191 5, she sank the British steamer Porato, bound 
from Liverpool to South America, after absorbing her coal, white 
flour, sugar, canned vegetables, oleo and a great quantity of 
Huntley & Palmer's sweet biscuits. So many of these biscuits 
were seized that tin boxes of them were given away as tips 
to the boys who ran out to her in small boats on the James River 
with messages, papers, etc. 

I watched the boys take away their prize boxes of Huntley & 
Palmer's biscuits and after I had learned the truth I wondered 
whether the people would really never hear about it through the 
magazines and ladies' journals and other organs of uplift that 
carry the costly advertising of so many foodless foods. 

January 14th, 191 5, she sank the British refrigerator steamer 
Highland Brae, running between the slaughterhouses of Argen- 
tina and the meat markets of London. The temptation to seize 
more fresh meat was not resisted and in addition she took enough 
shoes to supply a small city. She also took all the oleo, white 
flour, potatoes and canned vegetables which the Highland Brae 
had aboard. 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 199 

Scarcely had the bomb exploded which caused the British 
steamer to gurgle to the bottom when the British schooner Wil- 
fred M., from St. Johns to Bahia, came peeping over the horizon. 
In half an hour the Germans overhauled her and took posses- 
sion of her cargo of salt fish, potatoes, white flour and butter. 

The pallor of her crew and the dilation of the pupils of their 
eyes and marked shortness of breath here and there were ob- 
served by the ship's surgeon but were not considered significant 
and the men went on devouring their typical American meals, so 
highly rated by the advertising geniuses of the refined food in- 
dustry. 

February 5th, 191 5, she sank the Norwegian bark Samentha, 
from Linton to Falmouth, loaded with a cargo of wheat — 
whole wheat. The germ and bran of that wheat would have been 
worth more to the rapidly succumbing Germans than its weight 
in gold and precious stones, but the Germans did not know they 
were sick. They did not know how badly they needed that whole 
wheat with its alkaline calcium and potassium salts. 

They did not know that within a few weeks a hundred of them 
would pass just one inch beyond the limit of toleration and then 
fall without warning, paralysed, to the deck. In consequence of 
their faith in fresh meat, white flour, oleo, boiled potatoes and 
coffee, those thousands of bushels of whole wheat with their 
priceless salts were sent to the bottom. Not a bushel was trans- 
ferred to the German ship. 

February 23rd, 191 5, she sank the French passenger steamer 
Guadeloupe, from Buenos Ayres to Bordeaux. There was more 
red meat aboard and plenty of ham, butter, white flour and canned 
vegetables. She seized it all. Some of her crew were corn- 
plaining of swollen ankles and pains in the nerves of the legs 
below the knees. Otherwise they seemed able to eat, sleep and 
work, and apparently no plague was in sight, for there still re- 
mained to them plenty of meat, lots of potatoes and enough white 
bread and butter to last seemingly forever. 

March 25th, 1915, with fifty of her men acting "queerly" and 
none of them any too vigorous, she sank the British steamer 
Tatnar, from Santos to Havre, with sixty-eight thousand bags of 
green coffee, seizing all her butter, lard, white flour and canned 
vegetables. 



200 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

She did not heed the fact that there is a balance of acid and 
base-forming elements in the "ash" content of all food. 

She did not heed the fact that in the food she seized, the 
base-forming elements had all been processed out. 

She did not heed the fact that after a diet of refined food a 
mild chronic acidosis is set up which abstracts the lime salts 
from the fibrous tissues, muscles, nerves, cartilages and bones. 
When the limbs of the German sailors began to swell they did 
not know that the swelling was due to the abstraction of these 
lime salts with the increased vascularity which follows. 

They did not heed the fact that loss of lime salts causes ir- 
ritability and weakness of the muscles with neuralgic pains. 
They did not know that the continued loss of lime salts causes 
effusion into the joints. 

They did not know that following these stages in the progress 
of acidosis the cartilages soon become involved and that this con- 
dition is in turn followed by thinning and erosion. 

They were consuming enormous quantities of the refined foods 
of high caloric value now so extensively relied upon throughout 
the United States and they looked in all directions for the cause 
of their trouble but the right direction. 

They did not know that the abstraction of lime salts is a 
cause of the rapid progress of tuberculosis. They simply con- 
tinued to raid as long as any strength remained in their fanatical 
bodies. 

March 27th, 1915, they sank the British steamer Coleby, bound 
from Rosario to St. Vincent with another cargo of whole wheat. 
They took her coal, white flour, butter, potatoes and canned 
vegetables, but sent the precious wheat to the bottom. 

Alarming conditions began to develop. Typical symptoms of 
paralysis, dilated heart, atrophy of muscles and pain on pressure 
over nerves, with anemia, were marked. Fifty of the men could 
not stand on their feet. They were dropping at the rate of two 
a day. It seemed that a curse had descended upon the cruiser 
and it was plain that the whole crew was rapidly going to 
pieces. 

The Kronprinz Wilhelm would either be manned by five hun- 
dred dead bodies in a few more weeks or she would have to make 
a run for it to the nearest port. Her wireless had told her that 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 201 

Newport News had given harbor to the Prim Eitel (Attila) 
Friedrich. She would take a desperate chance against the enemy 
and make a dash. April nth, 191 5, having been out 255 days, she 
made that dash. 



§ 61 — AMERICAN MEALS 

That is why the German cruiser lay at anchor in the James 
River, a floating wreck, a hospital ship, a lesson to the American 
experts who cry "beri-beri and polished rice," when red meat 
and white bread are the real issue. Their scientific murmurings 
only serve to further mislead the American people and cloud 
refined food in a maze of professional ignorance. Of course 
there really is a disease called beri-beri that really is caused by 
polished rice, but there is no rice connection between the acidosis 
of the Kronprinz Wilhelm and the beri-beri of Billibid Prison. 

Here was a crew of men living in the open air, eating the 
staple articles of diet for which the American scientists claim 
so much. Fresh meat, all the fat and cheese they could eat, 
boiled potatoes, canned vegetables, condensed milk, sugar, tons 
of fancy cakes, biscuits and white bread, and all the coffee and 
tea they could drink constituted their diet. 

"But if German sailors eat typical American meals for two 
hundred and fifty-five days and develop on that diet of white 
bread and meat a condition of malnutrition that has resulted so 
disastrously, why do not the Americans themselves develop the 
same conditions?" you ask. 

Americans do develop the same conditions, but because they 
eat many other offsetting foods, which were outside the reach of 
the German sailors, the severity of the condition is modified 
accordingly. 

On the Kronprinz Wilhelm the intensity of the cause deter- 
mined the gravity of the effect. There was no outside assistance 
in the form of offsetting fresh vegetables and fruits or whole 
grain foods to lessen that intensity. The canned vegetables con- 
sumed, although theoretically contributing base- forming elements., 
were consumed in comparatively small quantities. 



202 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Their juices, contaminated to some extent with salts of tin 
and sheet iron, acted possibly as an irritant to the kidneys, already 
taxed beyond their capacity with excess quantities of sulphuric, 
phosphoric and amino acids, elaborated in the digestion of high 
protein and refined carbohydrate foods. 

Americans before the war, as far as they could afford, ate more 
or less generously of onions, lettuce, asparagus, cabbage, carrots, 
parsnips, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, celery, apples, berries, 
oranges, grapes and other base-forming foods, all of which assist 
Nature to combat or to modify some of the evil effects of the 
refined diet on which the Germans attempted to thrive for a long 
period. 

Thousands of children of the poor in the United States have 
always been like the crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm. During 
the era of high war prices they have been more than ever like 
that crew. They do not now obtain these offsetting foods in 
adequate quantities, and in the case of adults there are thousands 
who, making improper choices, deprive themselves needlessly of 
these offsetting bases. 

In the meantime the condition of acidosis does progress suf- 
ficiently to interfere with the growth of the young and to rob 
the body of the adult, through lowered vitality, of its natural 
defence against disease. It imposes a tremendous handicap upon 
pregnancy and lactation. It predisposes to tuberculosis, pneu- 
monia, appendicitis, measles, meningitis, constipation and cancer. 

It does not pile up its woes in a heap as was done on the 
German cruiser. It spreads them out thinly over a larger area 
and provokes many preventable ills. 

The Kronprinz Wilhelm 's experience should be illuminating 
to Doctors Dufour, Giroux, Quirin and Rudolf, who have re- 
ported on the outbreak of war nephritis and trench edema, but 
they probably have never heard of the Kronprinz Wilhelm and 
her trouble. 

The lesson of the Kronprinz Wilhelm is this : She has proved 
almost conclusively the inadequacies of the very foods on which 
America relies so heavily for the protection of her troops, as well 
as the protection of her so-called middle and lower class civilians. 

No prolonged experiments had ever been conducted to deter- 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 203 

mine the evil result of living exclusively on such foods. The 
Kronprinz Wilhelm furnished that experiment. 

There can be no greater or more picturesque proof of the folly 
of unbalancing food by refinement, of the folly of ignoring the 
meaning of the salts, colloids and vitamines natural to all un- 
processed foods ; of the folly of claiming for high caloric foods 
the absurd virtues they do not possess. 

With Dr. Perrenon, the ship's surgeon, I went over all these 
points, and many more, treating them in detail. I did not sug- 
gest to him that it was beri-beri which had so tragically affected 
his men, for the reason that the cure for beri-beri, pellagra, 
acidosis, nephritis, edema and scurvy is the same. It consists 
in restoring by unrefined foods to the sapped body the bases 
stolen from it. 

Dr. Perrenon asked me to write a formula for feeding his 
stricken men. I did so, left him an article I had written on the 
subject and returned to New York. 

Then came the following response in writing : 

"With respect to the disease we have on board we are satisfied 
now that this condition is due to the impoverished character of 
our food supply. The remedy you have suggested is obviously 
the correct one and I shall immediately order its application. I 
shall read your monograph studiously. 

"E. Perrenon, 
"Chief Surgeon, S. S. Kronprinz Wilhelm." 

The formula which it was my privilege to suggest, after all 
medical treatment had failed, and the extraordinary result which 
followed its application, will constitute the final chapters of this 
dramatic, and, at the same time, truly scientific episode. 



§ 62 — GERMAN RESULTS 

What was the cause of the breakdown aboard the Kronprinz 
Wilhelm, and what was the nature of the remedy which, after 
all medical treatment had failed, restored the broken men to 
health ? 



204 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

From the ship's cook, with the chief surgeon's assistance, I 
obtained the following chart, showing just what each meal con- 
sisted of prior to the breaking out of the disease described by 
the scientific men as "beri-beri." The chart, explaining the 
origin of the disease that caused the collapse of no of the crew 
of 500 in 255 days, and was taking off the others at a rate 
which promised that the entire crew would be down in two 
weeks, tells just what was behind the beri-beri, acidosis, neuritis, 
jail edema, trench edema, war nephritis, pellagra, or whatever 
term is adopted to describe the sufferings of the men. 



MONDAY 

Breakfast Dinner 

Cheese, oatmeal, condensed milk, Pea soup, canned vegetables 

white bread, butter (oleo), coffee, served in juice that stood in cans, 
sugar. roast beef, boiled potatoes, white 

bread, coffee, condensed milk, 
sugar. 

TUESDAY 
Breakfast Dinner 

Sausage, white bread, butter Potato soup, canned vegetables 

(oleo), fried potatoes, coffee, con- served in juice that stood in cans, 
densed milk, sugar. pot roast of beef, boiled potatoes, 

white bread, butter, coffee, con- 
densed milk, sugar. 

WEDNESDAY 
Breakfast Dinner 

Corned beef, white bread, butter Beef soup, roast beef, boiled po- 

(oleo), fried potatoes, coffee, con- tatoes, white bread, butter (oleo), 
densed milk, sugar. coffee, condensed milk, sugar. 

THURSDAY 
Breakfast Dinner 

Smoked ham, cheese, white Lentil soup, fried steak, fried po- 

bread, butter (oleo), coffee, con- tatoes, white bread, butter (oleo), 
densed milk, sugar. coffee, condensed milk, sugar. 

FRIDAY 
Breakfast Dinner 

Boiled rice, cheese, white bread, Pea soup, salt fish and pot roast, 

butter (oleo), fried beef, coffee, boiled potatoes, canned vegetables 
condensed milk, sugar. served in juice that stood in the 

cans, white bread, butter (oleo), 
coffee, condensed milk, sugar. 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 205 



SATURDAY 
Breakfast Dinner 

Corned beef, cheese, fried pota- Potato soup, roast beef, boiled 

toes, white bread, butter (oleo), potatoes, white bread, butter (oleo), 
coffee, condensed milk, sugar. coffee, condensed milk, sugar. 

SUNDAY 

Breakfast Dinner 

Beef stew, cheese, fried potatoes, Beef soup, pot roast, canned vege- 

white bread, butter (oleo), coffee, tables, served in juice that stood 
condensed milk, sugar. in the cans, boiled potatoes, white 

bread, butter (oleo). 

At four o'clock every afternoon the men were served with a 
plate of Huntley & Palmer's fancy biscuits or sweet cakes with 
coffee, condensed milk and sugar. 

SUPPER 

Evening meal consisted either of fried steak, cold roast beef, 
corned beef hash, beef stew with potatoes or cold roast beef with 
white bread, butter (oleo), coffee, condensed milk and sugar. 

The raids, which resulted in the sinking of so many French 
and British merchantmen (fourteen), yielded, as we have seen, 
enormous quantities of coal for fuel, enormous quantities of 
fresh beef, white flour, sugar, oleomargarine, potatoes, cheese, 
condensed milk, white crackers, sweet biscuit, coffee, tea and 
sugar, with considerable quantities of canned vegetables, ham, 
bacon, beans, peas, beer, wine and spirits. 

The raids never resulted in any large quantity of fresh vege- 
tables or fruits. If such fresh vegetables and fruits as were 
confiscated had been divided among the crew they would not have 
sufficed for more than one day. In consequence they were re- 
served for the officers' table, which they managed to provide 
with fair quantities from one raid to another. 

All the officers showed symptoms of anemia and mild acidosis, 
but none of them was prostrated. From their tissues and blood 
the lime, iron and potassium had not been robbed to the degree 
suffered by the tissues and blood of the men. 

The formula, designed to restore these lost salts which it was 



206 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

my privilege to suggest to the ship's chief surgeon, and which 
was followed by him after it became evident that the men would 
not respond to medication, was as follows : 

"To one hundred pounds of wheat bran add two hundred 
pounds water. Leach for twelve hours at one hundred and 
twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Drain off liquor. Give each man 
eight ounces each morning. 

"Give each man one teaspoonful wheat bran, morning and 
night, until contra-indicated by loose stools. 

"Boil cabbage, carrots, parsnips, spinach, onions, turnips to- 
gether two hours. Drain off liquor. Discard residue. Feed 
liquor as soup in generous quantities with unbuttered whole wheat 
bread. 

"Wash and peel potatoes. Discard potatoes. Retain the skins. 
Boil skins and give liquor to men to drink four ounces a day. 

"Give to each man yolks of four eggs a day in fresh, sweet, 
unskimmed milk, one yolk every three hours, with as much milk 
as he will drink by sipping. 

"At noon, with dry whole wheat bread, give one ounce fresh 
roast beef, for the psychological effect upon the men who have 
been taught to believe that without meat they cannot live. 

"One hour before drinking milk give juice of ripe oranges or 
lemon juice, diluted with water without sugar, to each man. 

"Keep apples or apple sauce within reach of men all the time. 

"At. end of first week let the men eat solids of vegetable soup 
as well as liquor. 

"It is imperative that the men shall avoid all cheese, whites of 
eggs, lard, fat of any kind, white bread, crackers, pastry, pud- 
dings, mashed potatoes, sugar, saccharine, salt meat, fish, polished 
rice, pearled barley, degerminated corn meal and gravy (acid- 
forming foods)." 

Aboard the cruiser we have a diet of typical American foods 
which, as to its adequacy, completely satisfies the standards of the 
modern scientist. 

At the end of two hundred and fifty-five days we have a 
disease of "mysterious" origin. To top off these conditions we 
have what appears to be the most outlandish and ridiculous cor- 
rective diet ever proposed. What then is the explanation $f the 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 207 

seemingly well-balanced diet which went wrong, and of the appar- 
ently foolish diet which went right? 

Certainly it was the duty of scientific men to keep the crew of 
the Kronprinz Wilhelm under surveillance that the effects of their 
extraordinary dietetic experience might be properly interpreted 
for humanity at large. 

If exclusive feeding on white bread, butter, potatoes, fresh 
meat, canned vegetables, sweet cakes, tea, coffee, condensed milk 
and sugar with a little rice, a few beans and an occasional piece 
of ham, is followed by any consequences at all, the experience of 
the Kronprinz Wilhelm afforded an opportunity to determine 
what those consequences are. 

The Kaiser's sailors were crippled. They were subsequently 
put back on their feet. Their sufferings and the result of their 
sufferings demonstrated at last to the American people the alarm- 
ing inadequacy of the most typical American foods. 

Out of the crew of five hundred the one hundred and ten who 
had reached the limit of toleration on the two hundred and 
fifty-fifth day had gone right up to the breaking point. The 
other three hundred and ninety had not completely collapsed. 
They were merely on the verge. 

Prior to the sudden prostration of these victims of demin- 
eralised food none of them had any suspicion that he was about 
to be stricken, but those who through pain and exhaustion finally 
realised the gravity of their condition, were now prepared to 
submit to heroic treatment, however absurd it might appear. Yet 
the men who were still able to walk the deck possessed no 
adequate conception of the gravity of the slow moving, insidious 
attack which their typical American foods had made upon their 
tissues. Like most of us they were the victims of habit which 
they were reluctant to change. 

None of them realised that the secondary consequences Of 
acidosis, even of its milder forms, are more dangerous than 
nervous prostration, neuritis, edema, beri-beri, or whatsoever 
other terms is employed to describe malnutrition. 

None of them cared a sailor's knot about the function per- 
formed by the alkaline salts necessary to neutralise the acid 
end-products of a meat and white flour diet. 

They were not interested in the fact that meat as dressed for 



208 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

human consumption is stripped of its bones and drained of its 
blood, and therefore does not furnish the alkaline substances 
upon which the normal alkalinity of the internal secretions de- 
pends. 

They were not worried about the fact that in the ordinary 
meat-containing diet, man to some extent offsets the acidosis that 
follows such diet by consuming milk, egg yolks, celery, lettuce, 
spinach, carrots, parsnips, beets, cauliflower, onions, string beans, 
asparagus, apples, oranges, berries, and other fruits and vege- 
tables. 

They were not interested in the fact that acidosis, even of the 
mildest type, is the forerunner of tuberculosis and other diseases, 
which follow in the wake of lowered vitality. 

They were too busy sinking ships to bother with the fact that 
acidosis is the most relentless calcium destroyer now engaged in 
breaking down human tissue. 

They had never heard of Scandola, who has demonstrated 
that nothing promotes the elimination and loss of calcium more 
than the use of decalcified foods, such as white bread, deger- 
minated corn, sugar and meat. 

To them the work of Drennan, indicating that the withdrawal 
of calcium may cause a fatty infiltration and fatty degeneration 
of the liver cells, meant nothing. 

They had too much to do to worry over the proofs that where 
the calcium supply of the blood is diminished the blood will not 
coagulate on demand, and that after a diet deficient in calcium 
post-mortem examination shows hemorrhages even in the long 
bones, thus revealing the hidden ravages that progress unseen 
until too late to be averted. 

They were eating foods not only deficient in caHum but 
deficient in the other mineral salts that accompany calcium, but 
they had no thought of the fact that where the mother is deprived 
of a sufficiency of calcium foods the fetus is handicapped by lime 
deficiency, its bones do not grow properly, its teeth do not erupt 
normally, and later they quickly decay. 

That their own diet had been robbed of calcium for purely 
commercial reasons meant no more to them than it now means to 
the Americans who also ignore it. 

For many years it has been known to the medical profession 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 209 

that the auto-intoxications or acid intoxications known as acidosis 
can be experimentally produced on a diet free from the alkaline 
salts. 

The sailors of the Kronprinz Wilhelm cared no more for this 
truth than does the American public. For many years it has 
been known to the medical profession that Nature, attempting to 
neutralise these acid conditions, sets up a process in which 
ammonia is withdrawn from the urea to such an extent that the 
quantity of "acetone bodies/' acetone, diacetic acid, and beta- 
oxybutyric acid can be gauged by it, and that these acetone bodies 
are found in many diseases, including diabetes. 

Did these facts have any significance for the raiding sailors of 
the Kronprinz Wilhelm? They did not. 

Ott and Crofton have shown that twenty times the normal 
quantity of calcium salts is excreted in tuberculosis, but the 
sailors cared no more for that than they cared for the fact that 
the complete withdrawal of calcium destroys the defence of the 
tissues not only against the invasion of the tubercle bacilli 
but against the assaults of many other diseases; that a normal 
food calcium content is indispensable to human life. 

That foods not processed or refined provided this normal 
calcium content meant nothing to the crew of the Kronprinz 
Wilhelm, who for two hundred and fifty-five days suffered such 
a loss of calcium that they established with considerable pre- 
cision the fact that two hundred and fifty-five days constitutes 
approximately the maximum length of life on a diet of such 
demineralised or decalcified food. 



§' 63 — the "kronprinz wilhelm" cure 

The German sailors were not concerned with the fact that 
demineralisation or refinement of foodstuffs involves not alone 
the loss of calcium but also the loss of all other "ash" con- 
stituents of normal food, such as potassium, iron, magnesium, 
silicon, fluorine, iodine, etc., and the other substances, fat soluble 
"A" and water soluble "B," found in leaves and grasses, and the 
germ or fat containing substances of cereals, each of which per- 



210 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

forms a function in the economy of nutrition no less picturesque 
or important than the role played by calcium. 

It was certain that if removed from the German cruiser to a 
hospital and subjected to the conventional hospital treatment, 
including tea, white toast, white bread, butter, cornstarch pud- 
ding, farina, cream of wheat, mashed potatoes and chops, all 
of the victims of the Kronprinz Wilhelm would have been doomed 
to tuberculosis, if tuberculosis had not already taken residence 
in their tissues. 

Their only hope of complete restoration to health, which meant 
complete repair of all the damage already done, and a return of 
nutritional immunity against disease, lay in a prolonged diet of 
food containing an excess of base-forming elements and a de- 
ficiency of acid-forming elements. 

This was the idea responsible for the "crazy" dietetic treat- 
ment I was permitted to suggest to the ship's surgeon, and which 
he applied with results that speak for themselves. 

It was clear that the tissues of the stricken men hungered 
for alkalines of vegetable origin, and that these alkalines had to 
be supplied. 

It was also clear that there was no better way of supplying 
them than by saturating the tissues with fluids containing them 
in solution. All the foods proposed, particularly the vegetable 
liquors, were rich in alkaline salts. That is why the potato skins 
were employed. 

I was convinced, and Dr. Perrenon agreed with me, that inas- 
much as the men had failed to respond to every other treatment, 
it would have been wrong to withhold the alkaline treatment, even 
though it might be laughed at in high places. 

We know that April nth, 191 5, the stricken men aboard the 
cruiser numbered one hundred and ten. 

April 1 2th, two new cases were reported. 

April 13th, one new case was reported. 

April 14th, four new cases were reported. 

April 15th, three new cases were reported. 

April 1 6th, the men began to be saturated with soluble alkalines 
of vegetable origin, to neutralise as quickly as possible the acidity 
of their internal secretions, and the toxins poisoning them. 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 211 

April 17th, 191 5, no new cases were reported, and Dr. Perrenon 
expressed great confidence in the treatment. 

April 18th, no new cases were reported. Many of the more 
recent cases manifested marked improvement. In eighteen cases 
the swelling in the ankles subsided, and in a number of cases it 
was marked that the pain on pressure over the nerves was not 
so acute. 

April 19th, four men were so much improved that Dr. Perrenon 
permitted them to go on deck. Many others showed signs of 
improvement. 

April 20th, fourteen men were able to leave the ship's hospital, 
and return to their own bunks. 

Dr. Perrenon said : "The effects of the new treatment are re- 
markable." 

April 2 1st, eight men were dismissed from the ship's hospital. 

April 22nd, eight more were dismissed. 

April 23rd, four more were so much improved as to be pro- 
nounced out of danger. 

April 24th, seven more cases were dismissed from the hospital, 
and one of the completely paralysed victims could stand on his 
feet without help. 

Ten days had passed and forty-seven men were so far ad- 
vanced toward recovery that Dr. Perrenon said : "We can safely 
say they are cured." The phenomenon was so striking that I 
had again journeyed to the vessel to be an eye-witness of it. 

Dr. Perrenon escorted me on the tenth day to one of the 
worst cases, that of a sailor who spoke English well. He was 
the second man aboard to collapse, going down in January, 191 5. 
After a diet from the officers' table he recovered until February 
23, when he again went down. 

When I visited the ship for the first time Dr. Perrenon thought 
the man might die. When I saw him on the tenth day he said: 
"I have had three days without pain. I am now hoping to be 
well." 

I examined him with Dr. Perrenon. The swelling of his legs 
had subsided, but the pain still existed when pressure was ap- 
plied. His condition was indeed pathetic. 

"You know you owe this to white bread and meat," I said to 
him. "Yes," he answered, "my case is the worst, but the other 



212 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

cases are bad enough. We all owe it to white bread and meat, but 
there will be no more such food in the German Navy when they 
know what happened to us. They will profit by this, all of 
them." 

I wondered then whether his words were prophecy, but so far 
their application in America reveals nothing prophetic about 
them. 

Returning to Dr. Perrenon's headquarters, after visiting the 
men, he brought out his history of all the cases, each of which 
is complete, with an exhaustive record of all the symptoms, in- 
cluding the date on which each man was seized. 

In January there were two cases. 

In February, the 23rd and 25th, there were two more. 

In March, the 4th, 16th, and 25th, there were three. 

In April the men went down like ten-pins, and they continued 
to go down until their prolonged mineral fast was broken by the 
strangest prescription ever written. 

"What can American scientists do in the presence of such a 
crisis ?" I asked Dr. Perrenon. "They can bow their heads," he 
said. 

"Will they not find some way to explain the situation that will 
still show the world that their knowledge of disease is ample, and 
the present habits of the people no real cause for anxiety?" I 
continued. 

"Some of them may be big men," he replied. "Big men will 
accept the truth no matter where they find it. As for me, my 
record is complete. Our German authorities will not let it escape 
them. Our experience will not be lost to Germany." 

He pointed significantly to the written records in his hand, and 
patted them affectionately, as if he realised their priceless char- 
acter. 

The Kronprim Wilhelm was putting on coal as if she were 
making ready for another dash to the sea. "But what will hap- 
pen if you run the gauntlet again and are pursued and " I did 

not finish the sentence. He looked at me. There was a pause. 
Then he spoke. 

"If we should be lost and our records destroyed a hundred of 
your American physicians and other authorities have seen the 
cases. The effects of the remedy have also been seen. I think 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 213 

nothing can happen " It was his turn to leave a sentence 

hanging in the air unfinished. 

Summing up the experience of the Kronprinz Wilhelm prior 
to her appearance in the James River, Dr. Perrenon said: "We 
had many cases of pneumonia, pleurisy and rheumatism among 
the men. They seemed to lose all resistance long before the 
epidemic broke out. We had superficial wounds, cuts, to deal 
with. They usually refused to heal for a long time. We had 
much hemorrhage. There were a number of accidents aboard, 
fractures, and dislocations. The broken bones were slow to 
mend. Nature was not doing her duty. Food is indeed the cause 
of much disease. In nine months we can learn much that is not 
to be found in the text-books.' , 

At 5:30 P. M., Saturday, April 24th, 191 5, Dr. Perrenon was 
ordered by his superiors to repress all facts concerning the con- 
ditions aboard the vessel. He would not admit that Bernstorfl 
issued the orders but I was led to believe as much. 

I left Newport News at once for Washington, where I reported 
to Congressman Walter M. Chandler, who escorted me imme- 
diately to the headquarters of Surgeon-General Blue. 

"Apart from all considerations of public policy or official rec- 
ognition of unofficial but well corroborated facts/' said the con- 
gressman, "there is an element in this Kronprinz Wilhelm 
situation which demands the recognition of this government and 
the profound attention of its experts." 

Surgeon-General Blue, after learning in detail the facts re- 
ported here, turned us over to Dr. Arthur H. Glennan, acting 
surgeon-general, and Dr. J. W. Kerr, chief of the Research 
Laboratory. 

Drs. Glennan and Kerr grasped the situation instantly. The 
magnitude and significance of the incident were obvious. The 
general bearing on the welfare of millions of growing children 
in America, who rely with profound confidence on the wholly 
inadequate foods which figured so largely in the general break- 
down of the crew of the German raider, was clear to them. 

By their admissions they indicated they realised that perhaps 
they really were on the peak of a newer and wider outlook upon 
the sadly neglected field of food research. 

In minute detail they reviewed with me the work of Drs. H. C. 



214 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Sherman and J. Edwin Sinclair, reported by them as far back 
as 1907 from the Havemeyer Laboratories, Columbia University, 
in connection with those foods that contain an excess of acid- 
forming elements as compared with other foods containing an 
excess of base-forming elements, or alkaline ash. 

They noted the conspicuous fact that in the dietary of the 
German seamen the alkaline bases were distinctly absent, and 
that their food was almost totally deficient in these indispensable 
elements. 

They noted that Sherman's and Gettler's research revealed 
nearly every one of the foods on which the Germans subsisted 
for two hundred and fifty-five days to be of the type that con- 
tains an excess of acid-forming elements. 

That the Germans responded almost instantly to a diet rich 
in alkaline ash was obviously significant. 

That forty-seven men should be dismissed from the ship's 
hospital within a period of ten days, following the ingestion of 
fresh vegetable soup, potato-skin liquor, wheat bran, whole wheat 
bread, egg yolks, whole milk, orange juice and apples, was worthy 
of notice. 

That no drugs were administered, and that all fat, egg albumen, 
cheese, meat, white flour and sugar were withdrawn from the 
crew's diet, was worthy of notice. 

That conflicting stories had already made their appearance in 
the American press, concerning the kind of food consumed by the 
Germans, was also worthy of notice. 

"An investigation now," they said, "depends upon the courtesy 
of the German government in permitting us the privilege of 
making an extended study of the situation. We cannot, of 
course, invade the ship, and would not dream of doing so if 
we could. Doubtless a request from the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury to this department to study the situation would be followed 
by the permission of the commander of the vessel to our men to 
probe the facts." 

We were not then at war with Germany, but our Government 
did not probe the facts. When we later went to war with Ger- 
many, the facts not only affected our physical power to deal with 
Germany in the trenches, but they also affected the productivity 
pf our civilian population at home, 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 215 

They now affect our second line of defence, the child. 

The Kronprinz Wilhelm, a. German raider, taught us a truth 
which to some degree may have helped the Germans, just as our 
American inventions — the submarine and the aeroplane — helped 
them. 

As far as America, England and France are concerned, the 
Kronprinz Wilhelm episode had no significance. 

God's laws, so easily discerned, remain ignored. 



§ 64 — THE HEIGHT OF CHILDREN CUT DOWN 

Tie report of the Health Commissioner of New York City for 
January, 191 8, showing the complete loss in Manhattan and 
Brooklyn in one month of 18,000,000 pounds of fruit and vege- 
tables, including pineapples, oranges, potatoes, onions, string 
beans, squash and turnips, only serves to emphasise the fact that 
in America we do not hold our public officials responsible for 
failure. 

Here was food of the very kind the people needed most, yet 
it was allowed to perish because authority to avert the catastrophe 
had been centralised in nobody. 

In Great Britain they kick a prime minister down stairs, throw 
a cabinet out of doors, and hoist a general upstairs when results 
do not suit them. 

In France the political career of a world-famous official is 
chloroformed over-night and in dire extremity the English submit 
to a French generalissimo. 

The Prussian government, finding the efficiency of this or that 
professional murderer on its staff not sufficiently horrible, ap- 
points another official murderer. 

In America we handle our worst bunglers, our most selfish, 
inefficient and inactive officials and politicians, our most useless 
servants, with deference and sloth. We criticise them day in and 
day out, but rarely hold them responsible. There is nothing 
superlatively American in that. 

In all our expenditure of money and all the beautifully carved 
planks of our political platforms, we have ignored the child. 



216 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

The well-laid plans of Germany for an enormous army in- 
cluded for many years the expenditure of vast sums to promote 
the health of children. 

France, facing a declining birth-rate, began the supervision of 
the health of school children back in 1842, and was the first to 
establish milk stations in 1892. 

Going further than this, but for self-preservation alone, France 
enacted laws governing the employment of expectant mothers, 
and created a money subsidy for mothers who nursed their 
babies. 

In America the Department of Agriculture, spending millions 
of dollars annually, has played politics with food industries, with 
the packers and their agents, with special privileges, with manu- 
facturers and distributors, and while issuing hundreds of thou- 
sands of bulletins, has permitted the standards on which child 
welfare is founded to be lowered right and left. 

The facts, for the very safety of America, should inspire a 
congressional review of the Department of Agriculture similar 
in scope to the probe made by the Federal Trade Commission, 
1917-1918, into the affairs of the packers. 

In confirmation of the disclosures paraded through these pages, 
Dr. Thomas D. Wood, professor of physical education, Columbia 
University, declared early in 1918 that the war had already 
brought to America as well as to Europe an increase in ill health, 
due to under-nourishment among children, a fact all the more 
alarming because it strikes at the very foundation of childhood, 
burdening the future citizen with a handicap to be carried 
throughout adult life. 

Dr. Lucas, examining the poorly nourished war children of 
Belgium, to whom hundreds of shiploads of American white flour 
were fed by the Belgian Relief, found tuberculosis and rickets 
had increased to such an extraordinary extent that the hospitals 
and sanatoriums, supplemented with many additional clinics, were 
wholly unable to care for the cases. 

In France and England tuberculosis among children, due to 
undernourishment, first doubled during the early years of the war 
and then quadrupled. Even the height of children during the 
growing period between twelve and fifteen years of age was cut 
down one and one-fifth inches, and the older children who had 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 217 

finished their growth as far as height was concerned, according 
to Dr. S. Josephine Baker, suffered an appalling loss of vitality 
due to underfeeding. 

The increase in wages in 1918 did not offset the decrease in 
the buying power of the dollar, and Dr. Baker declares from her 
specialised investigations that "never before have our children 
been so underfed or so lacking in vitality." 

"There is no actual starving among them, it is merely a ques- 
tion of habitual underfeeding, the real significance of which is 
lessened resistance to disease. 

"Such underfed children will not only contract the diseases 
of childhood more readily, but they will be the first to fall victims 
of tuberculosis." 

Neither the Department of Agriculture nor the Food Ad- 
ministration attempted to avert the destruction of the millions 
of pounds of food which these undernourished children re- 
quired, but which they did not obtain. 

The Department of Agriculture is on record to the effect 
that it knows how to avert these tragedies. Surely the results 
of our sloth are sufficiently visible to inspire the application of 
this knowledge. 

We know, for instance, that during the first six months of 
1915, two years before we entered the war, of 11,000 applicants 
for enlistment in the United States Marine Corps only 365 were 
considered physically fit. 

The report of the surgeon-general of the Navy for 1916 shows 
70 per cent, rejections for the Navy and Marine Corps. Of 
278,537 applicants for enlistment in the army between 1914 and 
19 1 7, 205,281, or nearly 74 per cent., were rejected at the re- 
cruiting offices because of physical defects, apparent even to 
observers who had no medical training. Even a red light is 
recognised as a danger signal and when we see it we promptly 
heed the ditch, but we saw no danger signal in these rejec- 
tions. 

At the recruiting depots where the men were subjected to more 
rigid examinations, an additional 10,062 were rejected, a total of 
nearly 78 per cent. Nobody asked the cause. 

It is now known that fully 10 per cent, of all our boys were 
thrown out because of underdevelopment, no surprise to those 



218 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

familiar with the conditions existing among our school chil- 
dren. 

All these rejects had all the red meat and white bread they 
could eat. They had all the corn flakes, corn starch, biscuits, 
pancake flour, syrups, degerminated corn meal, polished rice and 
patented breakfast foods they could consume. Yet the policy 
of the Department of Agriculture and of the Food Administra- 
tion was not to interfere with business or the established order of 
things. 

It was enough for their purpose to get stuff labelled food 
regardless of whether it was adequate food or not. It was the 
easiest solution of a truly heroic problem, but the easiest way is 
usually not the best way. 

According to the Food Administration's policy the quality and 
adequacy of food received no attention, but it was of paramount 
importance that commercial interests should in war time make 
their pre-war normal profits, for the reason that in Herbert Hoov- 
er's belief, although no one should make any profit out of war, he 
held that as an economic system the country could not revolve 
twenty-four hours without it. 

This statement, never published in the newspapers, is found 
on page 933 in the testimony of Herbert C. Hoover at the hear- 
ings before the sub-committee of the Committee of Manufac- 
turers, United States Senate, Thursday, January 3, 1918. 

In the light of the neglected facts which our many war ac- 
tivities completely submerged, it is manifest now that we must 
heed the pressing truth. 

Mere tonnage, bulk and volume may suffice for a time, but if at 
the root of the nation undernourishment is permitted to gnaw, 
all its heroic efforts must result in ghastly failure. 

General Pershing himself, in February, 1918, manifested no lit- 
tle solicitude with regard to the food supply of our forces in 
France. A despatch from his headquarters informed us that on 
an inspection tour he asked the boys if they were getting enough 
to eat. 

It was not generally known in America at the time that a 
disease called war nephritis was prevalent as an epidemic among 
French and British troops, as well as among those of the Cen- 
tral Powers. 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 219 

The Canadian Medical Association in April, 191 7, reported the 
frequency of war nephritis among the troops, declaring that the 
disease was the subject of an investigation in the military hos- 
pitals at the front. 

In 1916 "Bulletin et Memoires de la Societe Medicale des 
Hospitaux," Paris, published the report of Dufour, Giroux and 
Qurrin on war nephritis, which substantially agreed with the 
findings reported by Rudolf of the Canadian Hospital Service in 
France. 

The medical observers declared that the disease was due to a 
limited diet, "particularly a too exclusive consumption of meat." 

The most significant symptoms of the disease are described as 
edema, which yields to a milk diet. Considerable vomiting, severe 
headache, roaring in the ears, difficulty in breathing and increased 
blood pressure accompanied the edema. 

These symptoms are identical with the poison squad white 
bread and meat symptoms heretofore reviewed. 

Immediately after the outbreak of war in 1914, I was called 
into consultation by the Belgian Relief and asked to devise a 
formula to cover the purchase and shipment of supplies for the 
stricken victims of Prussian violence. 

I submitted all the facts concerning the dangers of a white 
flour diet that up to that time had been determined by various 
government agencies. I made recommendations accordingly. 

These recommendations were not acted upon. 

Why were they not acted upon ? Why are they not acted upon 
now? 

White bread has not saved the children of Belgium. It has 
not saved the children of France and England. It has not saved 
the children of America. 

If the governments of the United States, France and England 
were not already in possession of data proving that the whole 
grain contains substances not found in the refined grain, the 
tragedy symbolised by war nephritis among the troops could be 
properly charged to invincible ignorance, a state of darkness 
which is at the root of so many miseries suffered by the human 
family, but our own government has spent thousands of dollars 
to determine the facts, all of which are on file in the archives of 
the United States Public Health Service at Washington, even 



220 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

though they were not utilised by the Department of Agricul- 
ture, the Food Administration, or the Quartermaster's Depart- 
ment. 

We now know that the manufacturers of patent flour are on 
record with the assertion that they vigorously opposed all efforts 
of the Department of Agriculture and the Food Administration to 
interfere with the white flour milling process, asserting in their 
defence that they insisted properly upon the retention in their 
refined product of all the elements of the grain "fit for human 
food," and the rejection of all the elements of the grain "unfit 
for human food." 

If they really believe that their discarded substances are unfit 
for human food, why do they advertise some of them so exten- 
sively even in the medical journals as "most fit," "most neces- 
sary" and "most indispensable" to human health, after appro- 
priating enormous advertising funds for the exploitation of their 
fancy by-product packages ? 



§ 65 DONALD B. MCMILLAN'S FOOD 

No wonder in March, 191 8, from behind the American front 
in France, through an Associated Press despatch, came the an- 
nouncement that "for a time our troops had to eat dark bread, 
but now they receive an ample supply of pure white bread." 

The commercial influences, working in America for white 
bread, had made American officials in France believe that white 
bread was superior. They did not suspect that bread made of 
wheat bled white might be a tremendous aid to the enemy. 

They had never heard of the experience of Donald B. Mc- 
Millan, leader of the Croaker Land Expedition, 1913-1917. 

They had never heard of the similar experience of Roald 
Amundsen, leader of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the 
Fram, 1910-1912. 

The Fram crew knew nothing of white bread. Not a man 
was ill for an hour, yet they faced colossal hardships for two 
full years upon a diet of pemican, consisting chiefly of oatmeal 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 221 

and dehydrated vegetables, with a little dried ground meat and 
oat biscuits made of whole oat meal and milk powder. 

Thursday, December 6, 191 7, from Donald B. McMillan in his 
office, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, 
I obtained the extraordinary record of his dietetic experience. Its 
significance is of priceless value to the entire world. 

"Four years of eating whole wheat biscuits, whole wheat 
bread, chocolate, dehydrated fruits and vegetables," he said, 
"surely ought to constitute a very thorough test of the nutritive 
value of these foods. Just such a prolonged test has convinced 
me that I could live indefinitely even in the Arctic upon such 
foods. My own experience has confirmed my conviction that 
they are truly ideal for the use of all explorers and expeditionary 
forces.' , 

In spite of the vicissitudes of his long struggle with the ele- 
ments, McMillan was unchanged in appearance. During his long 
absence he suffered no loss in health, weight, vigour or strength, 
and what he says is of moment to us in this hour of intensified 
endeavour, the rugged demands of which have nothing in com- 
mon with that delicate substance — bread bled white. 

McMillan sailed from the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the ill- 
fated steamship Diana, July 5, 1913. At one period during 
his four years' absence the world gave him up for lost. But the 
world is richer, immeasurably richer, as a result of his return 
to civilisation with the fruits of his inspiring adventure, fruits 
which I reverently pray America will not refuse to eat. 

Here are his words as they were taken down by my friend, E. 
H. Tunnison, an earnest disciple of food truth : 

"Perhaps Small and I of our original party of seven were 
the only two who remained in the Arctic for the full term of 
four years. I believe, therefore, that we two have been subjected 
to a diet test longer than any other human beings whose experi- 
ence has been recorded. 

"Eckblaw, who returned to South Greenland in 1916, with 
Danish officials, and Small, ate ships biscuits until our stock of 
them was depleted, after which they were forced to eat dog bis- 
cuits composed of inferior ingredients, in some instances horse 
meat. The dog biscuits did not seem to disagree with them." 



222 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

(The Bennett dog biscuits are made from meat and whole 
wheat). 

"The Eskimaux, both parents and children, are very fond of 
dog biscuits. They are also fond of whole wheat biscuits. When 
we left for home we gave them three hundred pounds of whole 
wheat biscuits which still remained among our supplies. 

"I ate the whole wheat biscuits exclusively, although by the 
end of the last year they had become very hard and irritated my 
mouth slightly when I chewed them. 

"They had been baked specially for our use, and at my request 
had been made harder than usual because of the natural ten- 
dency of biscuits to become soft and crumbly. Our cook soon 
devised a way to remedy the unexpected defect of extreme hard- 
ness. He placed them in a canvas bag and beat them with a 
hammer until they were pulverised. He then added a little flour 
and converted them into appetising loaves of bread. 

"During the entire period I suffered no disturbance either of 
digestion or of intestinal action, due, I believe, to the use of 
the whole wheat. 

"When I was with Peary on his trip to the North Pole in 
1909 it was the common experience of all of us to suffer from 
bleeding intestines. 

"Peary believed in beef, suet and raisins, tea, ships biscuits 
(white flour) and condensed milk. He took with him 10,000 
pounds of white flour, 1,000 pounds coffee, 800 pounds tea, 10,000 
pounds sugar, 7,000 pounds bacon, 10,000 pounds white biscuit, 
100 cases condensed milk, 30,000 pounds pemican, 3,000 pounds 
dried fish. 

"I took with me 5,000 pounds whole wheat biscuits, 2,000 
pounds whole wheat flour, 1,080 pounds dehydrated vegetables, 
equivalent to 10,000 pounds fresh vegetables, including potatoes, 
rhubarb, turnips, spinach and onions ; 12 cases assorted dehy- 
drated soup, 19 crates yellow-eyed beans, 12 crates pea beans, 
150 pounds Scotch green peas, 200 pounds yellow split peas, 1,000 
pounds dried apples and apricots, 608 pounds prunes, 300 pounds 
raisins, 900 pounds chocolate, bitter and sweet, 1,000 pounds 
brown sugar, 42 cases baked beans, and assortment of nuts, dates, 
figs, lime juice and grape juice, and a small assortment of canned 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 223 

peaches, pears, cranberries, apples, cherries, plums, corn, peas, 
tomatoes and squash." 

A casual comparison of the food taken by Peary and the evil 
results that followed its consumption, with the foods taken by 
McMillan and the remarkably uneventful results experienced by 
his party reveals the fact that Peary's supplies, with the excep- 
tion of the raisins, contained in his pemican, were strikingly 
deficient in the base-forming or alkaline salts and vitamines* so 
essential to health, strength and endurance. 

McMillan's superior judgment in the matter of diet, aided by 
his observation of Peary's unfortunate experience, enabled him 
to overcome the deficiencies of the Peary diet with results so 
striking that the Army and Navy of the United States might well 
analyse them and appropriate their virtues. 

Among McMillan's illuminating observations the following is 
especially significant. 

"We all were most decidedly impressed by the wonderful 
flavour and invigorating quality of the dehydrated fruits and 
vegetables. We also ate with gusto the baked beans (rich in 
alkaline substances). 

"Explorers in the past, Kane in 1853 and Scott and Shackelton 
in 1902, frequently collapsed for the reason that they did not take 
an adequate supply of foods containing these essential sub- 
stances. They were deceived by their belief that fresh meat was 
a suitable preventive of scurvy" (sometimes called acidosis, some- 
times beri-beri, pellagra, neuritis, jail edema, pernicious anemia, 
etc.). 

Scurvy is a symptom of impoverished or de-alkalised blood, 
due to the consumption of acid-forming foods, white flour, meat, 
sugar. 

Scurvy or one of its many kindred disorders always develops 
when the blood is robbed of its potassium and calcium salts. 

These disorders are feared by explorers although they are 
typical deficiency diseases, practically identical with beri-beri 
and pellagra, which are not feared at all by the people who stay at 
home. 

Elisha K. Kane, M.D., U. S. N., leader of the second Grinnell 
Expedition, 1853-1855, a group of Americans who penetrated the 
polar regions in search of Sir John Franklin, British explorer lost 



224 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

in the Arctic in 1845, describes in his report of his unsuccessful 
and costly experience the evils with which malnutrition cursed 
his heroic and noble effort. 

"Not a man now," he wrote, "except Pierre and Morton, is ex- 
empt from disease, and as I look around upon the pale faces and 
haggard looks of my comrades, I feel that we are fighting the 
battle of life at a disadvantage, and that an Arctic night and an 
Arctic day ages a man more rapidly and more harshly than a 
year anywhere else in all this weary world." 

Dr. Kane's supplies, though he had the medical knowledge of 
his time to guide him in their selection, consisted of pemican, 
biscuits, pickled cabbage and a small stock of American dried 
fruits and vegetables, which was only too soon exhausted. Had 
the vegetables held out his men would have been saved. 

Following their exhaustion his crew lived upon hard tack 
(pilot crackers) from which the bran and germ had been fool- 
ishly sifted out ; stewed dried apples, tea, coffee, sugar and small 
portions of potato and fat. 

Whole wheat would have brightened his melancholy lament, but 
Kane had never heard of it, although Sylvester Graham, M.D., 
had tried to make it famous. 

As their supplies became thinner, the Kane crew resorted to 
the use of fresh meat, easily obtained in the Arctic. Meat did 
not save them. Soon muscular weakness, such as chickens, 
guinea pigs, white mice and human poison squad subjects ex- 
perience when fed on white flour and meat, asserted themselves. 

The men bled from the nose at the slightest provocation. Their 
blood had lost the power of coagulation, as all blood does when 
robbed of its calcium. 

McMillan, profiting by his studies of polar adventures, saw to 
it that his supplies contained an abundance of these salts so 
grossly disregarded in our American diet. 

Shackelton, too, in his "The Heart of the Antarctic/' has some- 
thing to say on this subject. These are his words : "In the first 
place the food must be wholesome and nourishing in the high- 
est degree. At one time the dread disease scurvy was regarded 
as the inevitable result of a prolonged stay in ice-bound regions, 
and even the Discovery Expedition, during its labours in the 
Antarctic, 1902- 1904, suffered from scurvy, but during our entire 



EIGHT POISON SQUADS 225 

trip from 1907 to 1909 we did not develop a single case of sick- 
ness, relying almost exclusively upon whole wheat biscuit, de- 
hydrated fruits and vegetables, marrowfat peas, lentils and kid- 
ney beans. 

"We carried with us dried prunes, peaches, apricots, raisins, 
currants, apples, dehydrated potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions, 
Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, celery, spinach, parsley, mint, rhu- 
barb, mushrooms and artichokes to the extent of 3,800 pounds, 
with 2,240 pounds of whole wheat biscuit." 

Anthony Fiala, commander of the Ziegler Polar Expedition, 
1903-1905, says in his "Fighting the Polar Ice": 

"The remark of General Grant that an army travels on its 
stomach, is now a maxim in text books on military logistics." 

Fiala's experiences emphasise the truths which all other polar 
explorers have contributed to the sum total of wisdom under 
which not alone armies, but civilians and their children, should 
be fed. 

McMillan tells us that he took with him five barrels of corned 
beef, but did not touch a mouthful of it, and that during the 
day, between meals, his party stood hunger off by munching upon 
whole wheat which they carried in their pockets, now and then 
chewing upon a pilot biscuit or a piece of bitter chocolate. 

"When I accompanied Peary," he declared, "our pemican which 
had been prepared by one of the Chicago packers, was found to 
contain numerous particles of foreign substance and therefore 
became useless to us. I made sure to obtain a different kind of 
pemican when I went North," he said. 

I have before me as I write a six-pound tin of the McMillan 
pemican which he brought back with him from the frozen north. 

This experience of McMillan's was not without its significance 
to Francis J. Heney, who encountered so much organised effort 
to interfere with his 1917-1918 investigation of the crimes of the 
packers. 



FIVE: AMAZING CONFUSION OF CLINIC 
AND CLASS ROOM 



f 



FIVE: AMAZING CONFUSION OF CLINIC AND CLASS 

ROOM 

§ 66 — IGNORING THE COMMONPLACE 

We have reviewed the results of hundreds of experiments con- 
ducted by scores of investigators working independently of each 
other upon the problems of nutrition. 

We have seen how all efforts to square the academic theories 
of dietitians with the simplest and most obvious of food facts 
end in complication and confusion. 

This chaos, for it is chaos indeed, broods as frequently in 
high places as among the plain people. It is largely the result 
of the materialistic spirit of the twentieth century, now happily 
undergoing a change. 

Men who fondly cherished their intellectual accomplishments 
as the chief glories of progress and the loftiest pinnacles of civ- 
ilisation, were prone to ignore the commonplace. 

Intellectual pride seemed to develop in them a sort of spiritual 
astigmatism. In their earthly pursuits they abandoned altogether 
the old-fashioned idea that God is the author of life, and that all 
manifestations of life are the expressions of fixed laws. 

They forgot that a hen's egg laid in China is identical in physi- 
cal and chemical properties with a hen's egg laid in Texas, or if 
admitting the fact, they promptly explain it away in ponderous 
phraseology. 

They forgot that the flavour of the elderberry and the peach 
are the same to-day as when they were boys ; that the seed is 
always true to type, and that from the acorn springs only the oak. 

They forgot that cow's milk produced in the isle of Guernsey 
or the state of Delaware is always physiologically the same and 
that the milk of the normal human mother, whether she be Es- 
kimo, Filipino, Armenian, Spaniard, Turk, Pennsylvania Dutch, 
Nordic, Alpine or Mediterranean, is always identical in com- 
position. 

229 



230 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

They did not stop to ponder over this constancy and fidelity 
of adherence to a never-changing standard, when all human 
standards about them are changing, even as the colors of the 
chameleon. 

They saw in them nothing of the operation of a divine law. 

They failed to note that the first food of every human being 
is colostrum, and that for the first three days of every normal 
infant's life the one and only food it requires is colostrum. 

They failed to see any active providence in the second food 
of the normal babe, which suffices it for at least a year. 

They could not admit that the appearance of colostrum and 
milk in their proper turn and at their proper time, without con- 
scious effort on the part of mother or child, is an expression of 
nature's august obedience to the will of God. 

They could not believe that if, as the result of the control of 
a fixed law, the food of the first three days and the food of the 
first year of the life of a human being have been pre-arranged 
and elaborated according to fixed standards, there must also be 
some similar pre-arrangement and control exercised in the pro- 
duction of the foods that follow during the second, the tenth and 
the fiftieth years of life. 

Such propositions as these they described as mysticism, failing 
to note that the grasses and the seeds of grasses prescribed in the 
book of Genesis, are the expressions of a law, and that there- 
fore these grasses and their seeds are to be accepted by man 
without change, manipulation, modification or refinement, even 
as colostrum and mother's milk are accepted by the infant without 
change, manipulation, modification or refinement. 

The very thought of refining mother's milk at the breast would 
be abhorrent to the modern infant specialist. He knows where 
nature's laws have not been violated through ignorance or ca- 
price, the milk of the healthy mother, just as it is compounded 
by her tissues, is the one food on which her infant thrives best. 

When such milk is examined chemically the reason for this 
phenomenon becomes obvious, and upon man's understanding of 
it he bases all his efforts in cases of necessity to modify the next 
best food for the babe — cow's milk, which must be made to re- 
semble physiologically the milk of the human by a marked change 
in its protein, fat, sugar and mineral content, in order that ft 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 231 

may be in some measure adapted to the requirements of the 
infant. 

These commonplace phenomena which rarely inspire the seri- 
ous contemplation of science and never the sonnets of a poet, are 
not interpreted by materialists as indices of a vast, beautifully 
ordered and sublimely executed scheme in the creation and main- 
tenance of life and health on this planet. 

Science, examining not the whole but its parts, does not as a 
rule arrive at the conviction that any capricious departure from 
the normal represents a trespass against laws of nature that 
must inevitably lead to physiological discord — disease. Break the 
law if you can get away with it; otherwise don't break the law 
is the advice of science, viz., the prophylactic kit. 

Man's failure to heed the laws of life is responsible for all the 
confusion and preventable misery suffered by him in the physical 
order. This confusion and misery is everywhere apparent. 

The more materialistic the nation the more vigorously it treads 
the paths of luxury, and the more violently it departs from nor- 
mal. 

Great is the price paid for its caprices in painful infirmity 
and untimely death. 

By a curious mockery of modern civilisation, the scientist and 
the teacher are found among the chief victims of this confusion, 
as we shall see. 



§ 67 — Hutchinson's teaspoon 

Ignoring the extent to which patent medicines, headache pow- 
ders, nerve tonics, constipation cures, "blood-builders," and the 
thousand and one self-administered doses are consumed by the 
ton, and denying outright that these physical infirmities owe their 
existence to modern "food refinement," many popular authori- 
ties persist in preaching the almost supernatural virtues of white 
bread. 

In a widely circulated article on this subject, published in the 
American Magazine, under the caption "The Color Line in 
Foods," Dr. Woods Hutchinson said : 

u The whitest possible of white bread was overwhelmingly 



232 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

proved to be not only more appetising but weight for weight and 
price for price, more nutritious and more wholesome than any 
black, brown, or brindled staff of life. 

"It is quite true that patent processed flour does not retain 
the yellowish and nutritious germ of the wheat berry and that 
this germ contains small amounts of 'fat' and 'phosphorus' which 
are not present in the remainder of the wheat and grain. But 
when the trouble was taken to weigh and measure the exact 
amount of this 'fat' and this 'phosphorus' it was found to be ex- 
ceedingly small, and a single teaspoonful of egg and a mouthful 
of meat or fish or a teaspoonful of milk would more than make 
good the amount lost in an entire pound loaf of bread." 

The error of Hutchinson's gospel is a matter of arithmetic. 

A pound loaf of whole wheat bread contains approximately 
eight ounces of water and eight ounces of whole wheat meal. In 
the whole wheat meal the total quantity, not of "fat" and "phos- 
phorus," but of fat, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, man- 
ganese, calcium, silicon, sulphur, sodium, iodine, iron, and other 
bodies of unknown nature, approximates 2 per cent, of the en- 
tire grain. 

The eight ounces of whole wheat meal in a one-pound loaf 
weigh 5,500 grains. Of this amount 2 per cent, or seventy grains 
consist of the mineral substances described. 

Hutchinson asserts, "These substances are present in a tea- 
spoonful of egg, a mouthful of meat or fish, or a teaspoonful 
of milk." 

The eight ounces of patent flour in one-pound loaf of white 
bread weigh 3,500 grains. Of this quantity much less than one- 
half of 1 per cent., or, to be exact, eighteen grains, consists of 
the mineral substances described. 

The difference between seventy grains, found in the whole 
wheat bread, and eighteen grains, found in the white bread, is 
fifty-two grains. These fifty-two grains, according to Hutchin- 
son's declaration, are found in a teaspoonful of egg or milk, 
"which, therefore, more than offsets the loss sustained in white 
bread." 

In milling the grain at least four of the mineral substances are 
entirely lost and many of the others reduced to a mere trace. 

Let us see how these substances are restored by a spoonful of 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 233 

egg. Eight ounces of eggs weigh 3,500 grains. Of this amount 
but sixteen grains consist of the mineral elements described. 

To offset the deficiency of fifty-two grains a quantity of eggs 
yielding fifty-two grains must be consumed. 

Eight ounces of eggs yield sixteen grains. One ounce of eggs 
yield two grains. To supply the missing fifty-two grains, twenty- 
six ounces of eggs, or approximately two dozen, must be con- 
sumed. 

There remains a vast difference between a spoonful of egg 
and two dozen eggs. 

Let us see now what would be required of a teaspoonful of 
milk in order that it might perform the miracle which Hutchin- 
son asserts it does perform. 

One pint of milk weighs 3,500 grains, approximately, and as 
seven-tenths of one per cent, of milk consists of the mineral sub- 
stances described there are found in an entire pint but 24 grains 
of the missing 52 grains. 

Thus, in order to offset the 52 missing grains, considerably more 
than two pints of milk must be consumed, just about three hun- 
dred times more than the resourceful teaspoonful of Hutchinson. 

As for a mouthful of meat little need be said. The Madeira- 
Mamore poison squad had plenty of white bread, but no meat. 
The Kronprinz Wilhelm poison squad had plenty of white bread 
and all the meat its members could consume. The results in both 
cases were identical. Neither the absence of the meat nor its 
presence in any manner diminished or increased the nutritional 
value of the white bread consumed. 

Had that bread been black, brown, or brindle it would have 
needed no such addition as "a single teaspoonful of egg, a mouth- 
ful of meat or fish, or a teaspoonful of milk." 

This is a sample of the confusion of "learned" men. We 
shall now examine another. 



§ 68 — STRANGE CONCLUSIONS OF LUSK 

The extraordinary manner in which purely speculative theoris- 
ing concerning carbohydrates, proteins, fats and calories clashes 



234 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

with actual fact was demonstrated at the anniversary meeting of 
the New York Academy of Medicine, November 20, 1913, when 
Graham Lusk made the statements that follow: 

"It is necessary that the body have a constant replenishment 
of its protein store. There is no doubt of the superior value of 
meat, fish, egg and milk proteins to that of bread, beans and 
Indian corn. 

"The proteins of rice and potatoes hold an intermediate posi- 
tion between the two classes of proteins above mentioned. Such 
facts make it possible to classify proteins according to their 
physiological value and they may be sold, therefore, as milk in 
three classes — A, B, and C. In a fourth grade, D, might belong 
gelatine and some other proteins which cannot replace the body 
protein which is continually wearing away. 

"Experiments with wheat protein show that gliadin, which 
represents nearly one-half of the protein of wheat, is of inferior 
food value. It requires more protein in the form of bread to 
protect from protein loss than it does when meat or milk is in- 
gested. The same is true of other proteins derived from grains." 

In making these extraordinary statements before a group of 
learned scientists, Lusk entirely ignored the fact that meat pro- 
tein, which he referred to in such extravagant terms, when de- 
prived of its mineral salts, destroys life. 

It is evident, therefore, that he did not establish his value of 
meat protein upon processed meat which we have seen, after hav- 
ing been immersed in distilled water and then fed to dogs, kills 
the animals. 

Why, therefore, should he estimate the value of wheat pro- 
teins or the protein of any other grain upon the demineralised 
white bread protein or the demineralised Indian corn protein 
which he used as a base for his comparisons ? 

We have seen how, in the absence of the mineral salts, colloids 
and vitamines, natural to all foods, no kind of protein is of any 
value to any living animal. 

We have not only seen that such protein possesses no value 
but is actually harmful. Reversing the order of Lusk's experi- 
ment it can be established that meat proteins from processed or 
exhausted meat are worthless compared with wheat proteins or 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 235 

corn proteins containing all of the mineral salts and colloids of 
the unbolted grain. 

At the same meeting Lusk also said, "The Eskimo consumes 
large quantities of meat, even as much as nine pounds a day, and 
yet health and strength are not wanting among these meat-eat- 
ers, and they are not the victims of uric acid diseases." 

Contradicting this declaration of Lusk, the Journal of the 
American Medical Association, March 28th, 1913, said: 

"We have previously noted the poor condition of health and 
sanitation obtaining among the natives of Alaska. In 1900 the 
census figures placed the native population of Alaska at 29,536, 
while in 1910 it had fallen to 25,331, a decrease in ten years of 
14.5 per cent. 

"Surgeon M. H. Foster oi the public health service reported, 
August nth, 191 1, that at Sitka fairly reliable statistics placed the 
annual birth rate for a period of five years and seven months at 
72.3 per thousand, and the annual death rate for the same pe- 
riod at 85.4 per thousand, an actual decrease in population of 
thirteen per thousand. 

"On request of the Secretary of the Interior, Past-Assistant 
Surgeon Emil Krulish of the federal public health service was 
detailed to investigate the health and sanitation of the Alaskans 
under the commissioner of education. His report, under date of 
January 22nd, 191 3, after a study of nine months, was filed with 
the Secretary of the Interior, January 25th, 1913. 

"The report corroborates all the findings of Surgeon Foster. 
The most serious menace is tuberculosis, which, if not erad- 
icated in the near future, will exterminate the native population 
of Alaska in the course of sixty or seventy years. This disease 
is present in all forms, especially in the pulmonary, osseous, and 
glandular types." 

It is not surprising that the flock should be bewildered when 
the shepherd brings to the sheep-fold such an amazing assort- 
ment of fodder. 



236 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 69 — DISEASE GERMS BAD WHERE THEY DO NOT BELONG 

Charles Clyde Sutter, referring to the natural defence of the 
body against disease, says: 

"We are continually in the presence of disease germs; almost 
daily we are exposed to contagious or infectious diseases, yet 
the body in health is able to protect itself and ward off the casual 
agents of disease. Any disturbance of perfect equilibrium in 
the functions of the body may be described as disease. 

"The severity of the disease is determined by the intensity of 
the cause and by the state of the organism and its power of de- 
fence. The first general biological law or general attribute of liv- 
ing matter is that of self-preservation. The first biological acts of 
living protoplasm are therefore nutritional. For perfect health 
there must be complete appropriation, assimilation, and elimina- 
tion. 

"It is impossible to prevent the entrance of bacteria into the 
digestive tract with our food. Against this invasion the normal 
human individual is protected by the secretions of the stomach. 
The body is protected against the poisonous substances formed 
in the intestinal tract by the internal secretions, the influence 
of the lining membrane of the intestines, the liver, which alone 
destroys two-thirds of the poison, and by the various glands 
throughout the body which have the power of destroying toxic 
substances, and also by the organs which aid in their elimination. 

"It will thus be seen, in accordance with natural law, that 
the organism is supplied with powers of nutrition which induce 
resistance, which enable it to protect itself by the destruction, 
by the counteraction, and by the elimination of deleterious agents, 
and thus, by adaptation, provide for the re-establishment of 
the disturbed equilibrium." 

Notwithstanding the certitude of these frequently demonstrated 
truths the school teachers of the United States, who are also the 
victims of confusion in high places, make no attempt to influence 
the young to a proper understanding of the laws of nutrition. 

Most of them are familiar with the erroneous but popular 
doctrines of Hutchinson and Lusk, but few, if any of them, 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 237 

know that refined foods of high caloric value, cause a disturbance 
of the functions of assimilation and elimination. 

They do not know that calcium salts, so wantonly removed 
from most natural foods, act upon the blood and blood vessels by 
tightening the unduly permeable vascular wall, thus promoting 
coagulation and stopping exudation. 

They do not know, as summed up by Kayser in his review of 
the importance of calcium salts for the therapy of internal af- 
fections, that these salts influence the excitability of the nervous 
system by depressing the latter, especially the vegetative and au- 
tonomous, and are therefore indicated in internal medicine espe- 
cially for tetany, epilepsy, hay fever, and asthma, in all of which 
they are used with success. 

They do not know that through there ability to increase the 
phagocytic power of the blood, calcium salts appear to come 
into question for the therapy of infectious diseases, like pneu- 
monia and tuberculosis, and that they also prevent oxalic acid 
poisoning. 

Not knowing the importance of calcium in the diet, they can 
have no suspicion of the importance of phosphorus, potassium, 
manganese, iron, or any of the other mineral salts, colloids, and 
vitamines so indispensable to the normal physical and mental 
developments of their pupils. 

In consequence of their ignorance of these fundamental truths 
they are unable, while learnedly discussing many of the orna- 
mental isms and ologies of the class room, to direct the growing 
child in matters that have a greater bearing upon its future 
life than all botany, geology, geometry, geography, and astronomy 
combined. 

The missing link in our modern system of education is to be 
found in the darkness which thus separates teacher from child. 



§ 70 — AILING INSTRUCTORS IN "iSMS" AND "OLOGIEs" 

According to records compiled by a committee, headed by Dr. 
Oswald Schlockow at the behest of the Brooklyn Teachers' 
Association, and made public November 14th, 191 5, 20 per cent. 



238 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of the teachers during the school year of 1913-1914 were absent 
from illness. 

All the data in the report were obtained from application 
blanks submitted by teachers to the board of superintendents 
for the refund of salaries deducted for absence caused by illness. 

Illness usually affects the pocket book as well as the health 
of its victims, a fragment of human wisdom which the school 
teachers have obviously acquired. "That 20 per cent, of absences 
from duty is far too low is proved," says the report, "by the fact 
that refund blanks are not generally submitted for brief periods 
of absence. And, moreover, it must be assumed," continued the 
report, "that many teachers, who, under normal conditions would 
and should have remained at home, because of physical disability 
to teach, forced themselves to report for duty which they could 
not properly perform." 

In other words, the pocketbook compelled these sick teachers 
to subordinate the hazards of doing those things which their 
physical condition made next to impossible to the stern necessity 
of earning money. 

The total number of applications for excuse of absence for 
all causes in the year 1913-1914 among this one group of teachers 
was 4,148. The total time lost by their illness was 68,442 days. 
The four prevalent ailments responsible for this loss were diseases 
of the respiratory organs, infectious diseases, diseases of the 
nervous system, and diseases of the digestive system. 

The throat and lung troubles it was found constituted 35 
per cent, of the diseases, acute contagious diseases 16 per cent., 
nervous diseases 15 per cent., and digestive disorders n per cent. 

These four diseases follow loss of resistance and immunity. 

"The fact disclosed by our investigation," declared the com- 
mittee headed by Dr. Oswald Schlockow, "that over one-fifth 
of the entire teaching corps of the city was absent because of 
illness during one school year indicates the existence of an ad- 
ministrative problem of great moment. 

"The teachers' health ultimately determines the efficiency of 
the entire educational system of the community. 

"The heavy morbidity rate ascribable to respiratory diseases," 
it declared, "deserves an investigation by the school authorities 
into the system of ventilation." 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 239 

Here, again, is a striking symptom of the confusion of the 
times. "It is evident that we must know what kind of air our 
teachers and their pupils breathe," assert the investigators, but 
there they stop. 

The crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm lived in the open air of 
the open sea. The convict poison squad of Mississippi breathed 
the purest air under the most hygienic and sanitary conditions 
which the state could provide. The railroad laborers of the 
Madeira-Mamore poison squad breathed an air uncontaminated 
by the fumes of the modern industrial settlement. Pure air 
and debased foods are not compatible. 

The school children of the country will never learn this fact 
until their teachers learn it. 



§ 71 — THIN-HAIRED WOMEN AND BALD-HEADED MEN 

As school teachers take their classes on inspection tours through 
the patent flour mills of Brooklyn the commerical chemists who 
pilot them from grinder to sifter and from sifter to bolter always 
volunteer the information that white patent flour is incomparably" 
superior to whole wheat meal. 

"White flour is far more nutritious than any mulatto-coloured 1 
product ever milled," they say. "Professor Harry Snyder 
says so." 

The teachers, impressed by the immensity of their surround- 
ings, and the really extraordinary experience of watching a 
battery of mills in operation in a large plant, go back to their 
classes perfectly satisfied that white bread will do after all. 

It never occurs to them that should Professor Harry Snyder 
speak out in meeting the money invested in so-called patent flour 
mills would have little use for him. 

Any school teacher who wants the truth can have it for herself 
without reference to Professor Harry Snyder. All she needs 
are three pieces of grits gauze known as No. 30, No. 50 and 
No. 60, three pieces of silk bolting cloth, known as No. 9, No. 10 
and No. 13, a small Fairbank scale with weights measurable 
by the one-thirty-second of an ounce for rough estimates and 
one grain weights for finer estimates, a magnifying glass that 



240 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

will enlarge ten diameters or a small microscope that will en- 
large ioo diameters. 

With this outfit if the school teacher will take eight ounces 
of Whole Wheat Meal and put them through the simple opera- 
tion suggested here some disclosures will be made that will prove 
little short of startling. 

I have capitalised Whole Wheat Meal because every city in 
the United States gives shelter to hundreds of packages of so- 
called entire wheat flour which, not being entire wheat at all, 
will not serve our purposes. 

Carefully sift the eight ounces of whole wheat meal through 
the No. 30 grits gauze. All the meal except approximately 
one 16-32 of an ounce passes through the gauze. 

With the magnifying glass it will be seen that the one 16-32 
of an ounce left on the No. 30 grits gauze consists of large 
particles of bran and germ with the "brush flour" that adheres 
to the bran. 

The bran is found to consist of rough, canvas-like, brownish 
particles, with a very remarkable suggestion of woof and warp. 
The germ, difficult to distinguish from bran with the naked eye, 
will be found to consist of rich, oily, cream-coloured particles. 

A chemical analysis of this bran and germ, which take up large 
quantities of water and hold it in the intestines for lubricating 
purposes, shows they contain the mineral salts, colloids, and 
vitamines. Both bran and germ are rich in silicon, sulphur, ni- 
trogen, iron, iodine, potassium, manganese, phosphorus, nucleo 
proteins, or phosphorised albumens, lecithins, or phosphorised 
fats, and the simple phytin compounds and phosphates without 
which, as proved in the St. Petersburg experiment, no animal 
can be properly nourished. 

The woman who values the thin and lustreless hair that re- 
mains to her, and the bald-headed man who wishes he had some 
hair to value, even thin and lustreless, will look dejectedly upon 
the discarded silicon, and the anemic creature who seeks in 
vain for solace in beef-iron-and-wine will pray for the miller 
who throws all this elemental food to the hogs. 

The teacher is now ready for operation No. 2. By sifting 
the balance of the wheat through grits gauze No. 50 it will be 
found that one and 5-32 of an ounce will remain on the gauze. 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 241 

Under the magnifying glass these particles, less coarse than those 
that were sifted out first, will be identified as bran, germ, and 
middlings. 

No handsomer breakfast food ever appeared on the market, 
and yet such breakfast food is know only to swine. 

The calcium, so necessary to Mother Nature in her calcifi- 
cation of tuberculous areas, will be disclosed under chemical 
analysis in these rejected keystones of the human arch. 

The school teacher's pupils will say, "Do we not eat this 
beautiful stuff held by grits gauze No. 50?" and the school 
teacher will say, "No, dear children, this is cattle food." 



§ 72 — A PRETTY TEST 

The school teacher, carefully sifting the balance of the wheat 
through grits gauze No. 60, finds that one and 29-32 of an ounce 
remain on top of the gauze. This rejected material consists 
of fine particles of germ, branny specks and middlings with their 
precious salts and colloids. 

A chemical analysis of the contents of grits gauze No. 30, No. 
50, and No. 60, shows that about two-thirds of the mineral 
salts of the original whole wheat have been removed and thrown 
away. 

She will now take No. 9 silk bolting cloth and pass the balance 
of the wheat through it, whereupon she will find that two and 
18-32 ounces remain on the silk. Again the magnifying glass is 
applied. The rich, cream-coloured particles consist of fine mid- 
dlings, fine germ, and a few branny specks. 

In this intimate mixture the bran is brown, the germ yellow, 
and the middling white. The combination is very beautiful but 
it is not sufficiently anemic for human food. 

The chemical test is again applied. It is discovered that on 
silk bolting cloth No. 9 and grits gauze No. 30, No. 50 and No. 60, 
three-fourths or 75 per cent, of the total original mineral con- 
tent of the whole wheat has been deposited. This mineral de- 
posit represents the loss all white flour sustains. 

The balance of the wheat is put through No. 10. Only 17-32 



242 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of an ounce remain on the cloth. The lens reveals this to be 
very fine middlings, sometimes known as farina, sometimes 
known as cream of wheat. It will not support life. 

Now take the balance of the whole wheat meal and sift it 
through silk bolting cloth No. 13. One and ten thirty-seconds 
of an ounce remain behind. This is fine flour, the summum 
bonum of modern milling. 

More refined, white, patent flour can be recovered from the 
middlings scattered through the other separations, so that out 
of the eight ounces of whole wheat about five ounces of flour, 
minus the minerals of the wheat, can eventually be recovered. 

This flour is subdivided by the millers into patent, straight, 
and low-grade. When patent flour was selling for $7 a barrel 
of 196 pounds, straight flour sold for $5 a barrel of the same 
weight, and low-grade flour for $4.25 a barrel. 

The high-grade flour, consumed by the baker, costs just half as 
much as the low-grade flour going to the dear people who don't 
know a thing about it. 

The phrase "high grade" is not employed in the significance 
of nutritional value. The higher grade the flour the more it 
has been robbed of the elements indispensable to health. 

As our school teacher becomes skilful enough in her use of the 
grits gauze and silk bolting cloth it will be easy for her to sep- 
arate the low grade, the inferior flour and the siftings and tail- 
ings from the so-called patent flours. 

After having sifted the patent flour through the silk bolting 
cloth, the school teacher will obtain a few slides of window glass, 
six or eight inches long by two inches wide. On one of these 
slides she will arrange a few little hills of the different siftings 
of the patent flour upon which she is experimenting. 

Placing these little hills side by side she will carefully slick 
them off with another piece of glass until with one steady down- 
ward pressing pull she has levelled all the little hills and given 
them a smooth surface. 

She will then immerse the glass slide with its layers of patent 
flour in a pan of cold water. This operation will bring out the 
bloom of the so-called high-grade flour and the grey of its low- 
grade neighbours. 

The lines of difference between each of the separations will 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 243 

be as plainly marked as a hedged fence. The school children 
will not be satisfied to stop when they witness these exhibitions. 
They will want to jump the fence, and explore the field beyond. 



§ 73 — EXPERIMENT WITH CHICKENS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 

When school teachers manifest an interest in the definition 
of the word "food" the school children will begin to learn some- 
thing about themselves not now taught through any text books. 

They will learn that the school girls of to-day are destined to 
be the mothers of the race ten or twenty years hence and they 
will understand why the school room is the place to study foods 
in their relationship to health and disease. 

In the basement or on the roof there will be ten cages divided 
into two groups of five each. 

There will be four chickens in each cage of the first group. 
The cages of the second group will be empty. The school chil- 
dren will feed the chickens. 

The chickens in cage No. i will be fed whole corn, whole 
oats, natural brown rice, whole wheat, unpearled barley, grass 
or greens of any kind, and water. The children will note that 
on this diet the chickens in cage No. I will be proud and spirited. 
Their feathers will be brilliant, their flesh firm, and their bodies 
well developed. 

The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 2 with 
simple mixtures of whole grains and denatured grains, the re- 
mainder of the diet being the same as that of cage No. 1. They 
will note that at the end of a period of six months there will 
be a marked superiority in the appearance of the chickens in 
cage No. 1. 

The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 3 with 
pearled barley, polished rice, processed oats, degerminated corn 
meal, and dough balls made of white flour and water with the 
same quantity of greens fed to the chickens in cages No. 1 and 
No. 2. 

In a few months the marked physical degeneracy of the health 
of these chickens will teach the children its own lesson. 



244 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 4 with 
beet pulp, from which some of the mineral salts have been ex- 
tracted by leaching in distilled water. In addition to this they 
will feed the chickens with soda crackers, white biscuits, gin- 
gerbread, gingersnaps, white bread, pie crust, and candy, plus 
water, with the usual quantity of gravel and greens. 

The conditions of the chickens in a few months will be elo- 
quently suggestive. 

The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 5 with 
white bread, white biscuits, white crackers and cakes, cream of 
wheat, farina, macaroni, corn flakes, caramels, soda water, and 
other fancy drinks. 

As the feathers of these chickens begin to droop and the chick- 
ens begin to huddle in the corners of their cages, seeking for 
the darkness, miserable even unto death, the lesson of the re- 
lationship of food to animal life will be taught. 

At this stage of the experiment the healthy chickens in cage 
No. 1 will be transferred to cage No. 6 and there they will 
be fed on the diet of cage No. 5 until they, too, begin to show 
the same symptoms of dissolution and disease. 

The chickens of cages No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and No. 5 will then 
be transferred to cages No. 7, No. 8, No. 9, and No. 10, 
where they will be fed on the natural, undebased, unimpoverished, 
undenatured diet of cage No. 1. 

The school children will see the sick chickens recover rapidly, 
and they will go through life with a lesson thoroughly learned. 
When they assume the responsibility of home life for themselves 
they will know that to abandon the laws of nature in the pursuit 
of some capricious food ornament will be at the expense of the 
health, happiness, and welfare of those dependent upon them. 



§ 74 — WHAT THE CHILDREN WILL LEARN 

Having become familiar with the chicken-feeding experiments, 
the children will learn that it is possible to alter the resistance 
of animals at will, and to overcome the effects of one diet by 
combining it with another.. 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 245 

They will learn that the resistance of animals as determined 
by Hunt, even to certain poisons, differs greatly according to 
the character of their diet. 

They will learn that Bulletin 69, Hygienic Laboratory, United 
States Treasury Department, declares "that in extreme cases 
mice after having been fed on certain diets, may recover from 
forty times the dose of acetonitrile fatal to mice fed on other 
diets." 

They will learn that a diet of oats or oat meal usually leads 
to a marked resistance, and that the administration of certain 
iodine compounds with such a diet further increases an abnor- 
mal resistance. 

They will learn that the experiments reported by the Govern- 
ment show that as far as resistance to acetonitrile is concerned, 
iodine exerts its action through the thyroid gland, and the re- 
sistance caused by an oat diet is in part an effect exerted upon 
the thyroid. 

The result achieved with iodine in the Rotunda Hospital, 
Dublin; the thyroid researches of Victor Hoarsely and the dis- 
covery of thyroidine by Bauman, have led more than one pa- 
thologist to the conviction that iodine is a potent factor in the 
neutralisation of the toxic substances formed in the human body. 

They will learn something of the most amazing developments 
of the war in the 1918 report from the British government 
laboratories at Cambridge, Glasgow and London, and various 
factories and hospitals in which government war bread experi- 
ments were conducted. 

They may ask the question in the presence of that report, 
"Is it not strange that after a nation-wide campaign to dis- 
courage the use of whole grain bread in the United States, a 
campaign that received the backing of the Food Administration 
itself, there should come from the British government a decla- 
ration that it finds bread composed of whole wheat flour mixed 
with 20 per cent, of other cereals not only suited to all ages 
and digestion, but also yielding a higher percentage of energy?" 

They will learn that the British loaves used in the experi- 
ment were baked from flour milled under the personal super- 
vision of A. E. Humphreys, president of the National Assor 
ciation of British and Irish Millers, 



246 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

They will learn that no precaution was omitted to make the 
experiments complete, and that every result was worked out in 
a series of tables. 

They will learn that at one factory in Yorkshire the tests 
were applied to a group of men, women and children, whose 
sole bread supply for two months was whole wheat bread. 

They will learn that although under medical supervision 
throughout their experience, in no case did the whole wheat bread 
cause digestive troubles, but that the health of the subjects im- 
proved during its use. 

They will learn that the people of New York City, now con- 
suming more than 100,000 loaves of 100 per cent, whole wheat 
bread every week, could have told the British government this 
and much more several years ago. 

"When the whole wheat bread was tried on various sufferers 
from tuberculosis," declares the British report, "most of them 
gained weight. The main fact established is that the human 
body can make better use of the parts of the wheat grain which 
have hitherto been discarded, than pigs and poultry to which these 
rich and nutritive by-products of milling have been given in the 
past. The country has gained enormously in food and energy 
from the compulsory inclusion in the loaf of these rejected 
by-products." 

Well may the children ask, "What did the millers, the prof- 
iteers and the Food Administration officials say when this British 
report was made public ?" 

In the meantime they will learn, from such hints as these, that 
man is guilty of sin, when he knowingly and deliberately re- 
moves from his food supply, in order to make it commercially 
profitable, those profoundly active and indispensable substances 
that God has compounded not for the benefit of the food manu- 
facturer, but for the benefit of little children, and the fathers 
and mothers who lovingly, anxiously, and in pain watch over 
them. 

They will learn that all through nature are exhibited subtle 
hints that the fixed laws under which all un juggled food comes 
to man's hands were intended with the co-operation of man's 
intelligence to serve his needs- 



CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 247 

They will learn that nature demands of man that he shall 
accept her dispensations not as accidents, but as exquisitely 
rhythmical processes, as profound in their operation as they are 
benevolent in their functions. 



SIX: HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 



SIX: HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 

§ 75 — "unsound flour," even though white 

Before dismissing white flour, it is necessary to refer to two 
other forms of flour against which the public needs protection. 

One is called "unsound flour," the other "bleached flour." 

Prior to August 19th, 1913, the authorities had never bothered 
about the question of unsound flour in the city of New York, 
although the New York Produce Exchange for years had main- 
tained a department, the chief duty of which was to reject such 
flour, so that members of the exchange would be protected 
against the financial loss involved in purchasing an inferior or 
inedible flour. 

The government had never made a seizure of such flour not- 
withstanding the enormous traffic in spoiled flour carried on. 

Flour men suffered no worries concerning any possible official 
interference with the final disposition of the rejected product. 
It was easier to work off decomposed flour by mixing ten parts 
of the rotten product with ninety parts of sound flour, thereby 
avoiding waste through the medium of the public's stomach. 
This unsound flour was always sold at a ridiculous price, but 
the public always paid the regular market price for the finished 
breadstuff from which it was made. 

Such was the situation August 19th, 19 13, on which day, in 
order to bring the issue to a crisis, I arranged with Dr. William 
H. Allen, director of the New York Bureau of Municipal Re- 
search, to have some of his men make an investigation with me 
of the grain piers of Jersey City. 

Accordingly, Dr. W. H. Deaderick and J. H. Kirshman, of the 
New York Bureau of Municipal Research, accompanied me 
on an inspection of the Lehigh Valley flour and grain piers. 
There we discovered 58,800 pounds of unsound, musty, and 
inedible flour packed in the regulation 196-pound cotton bags. 

These bags are porous. All flour is shipped in them. Rats run 

251 



252 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

over them. They are subject to many unspeakable forms of 
contamination in the freight yards. But that is still another mat- 
ter relating not to nutrition but to sanitation. 

The regulations of the New York Produce Exchange require 
flour to be marked "Sound" or "Unsound." None of this flour 
bore any mark indicating its true nature and no satisfactory ex- 
planation could be made by Flour Inspector W. J. Taylor, in 
charge of Piers I, G, and E, Lehigh Valley Railroad, Jersey City. 

I notified the New York station of the bureau of chemistry, 
Department of Agriculture, of our findings. Federal Inspectors 
Lind and Ford were despatched to the scene. The government 
men were denied access to the flour by the railroad officials. 

For a period of twenty-four hours they believed they could 
do nothing with the stuff which, in the meantime, had been re- 
jected as "unsound" by Messrs. Hewer & Siney, of the New 
York Produce Exchange, and sold at a fraction more than a 
cent a pound to a blending plant on Staten Island. 

The government's inspectors, in communication with Wash- 
ington, were instructed by wire to make another effort to examine 
the flour. They returned to the pier the following day but, in 
the meantime, somebody had performed a mysterious ceremony 
over the decomposed stuff. 

During the night the contents of the 196-pound bags were trans- 
ferred to 140-pound bags. The manipulation was intended to 
rescue the rotten flour from the jurisdiction of the government 
officials. 

It has been held in the trade and in more than one federal 
district court that the government's jurisdiction over any product, 
however rotten, comes to an end once that product has been re- 
moved from the original package in which it had been shipped 
into interstate commerce. 

Dr. Carl Alsberg, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, was im- 
mediately notified of the complexity of the situation, and, re- 
gardless of the legal aspect of the case, his efforts finally resulted 
in a seizure of the rotten flour on a libel issued by United States 
District Attorney Warren Davis, Trenton, N. J. The attach- 
ment was made by United States Deputy Marshal Beekman, 
Jersey City. 

Prior to this seizure I had made numerous vain attempts to 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 253 

obtain action through the New York City Health Department, 
but the Health Department refused to concern itself with the 
unsoundness of the city's bread supply. 

It is not generally known or even suspected that unsound flour 
is exceedingly common. They tell us whole wheat flour spoils. 
They do not refer to spoiled white flour. 



§ 76 — "bleached flour" 

Most large cities and nearly all the small towns of the United 
States are deluged with bleached flours. Millers of the middle 
west are dumping low grade bleached products into bakeshops in 
carload lots. Scarcely a day passes in which the chief inspector 
of the New York Produce Exchange is not called upon to ex- 
amine bleached flour. Even the housewife can detect this fraud 
if she so desires. 

The baker who uses bleached flour knows what he is buying 
at a cheap price for the reason that the barrel in which it reaches 
him is labelled according to its contents, although he is not re- 
quired by law to label his bread and cake in the same way. 

The federal pure food label on bulk packages is intended only 
as an index of wholesale values for the benefit of the manufactur- 
er or merchant. It does not follow the manipulated foodstuff in- 
to the hands of the consumer. Hence the consumer knows noth- 
ing of the vast system of fraud which ends when the bulk package 
is safely delivered to the cellar or sub-cellar of the food factory, 
or deposited in a public warehouse subject to the food factory's 
orders. 

The test for bleached flour is a simple one and a rather pretty 
experiment. Take a handful of the suspected flour. Pat it into 
the form of a little mound or pyramid, placed on a marble slab 
or wooden table. With the thumb depress the top of the mound, 
thus forming a cup or well about the size of a thimble. Into 
this well pour a teaspoonful of a mixture purchasable at any 
wholesale drug store under the name of the Gries Hasway 
Reagent. This reagent is a mixture of equal parts of sulpha- 



254 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

nilic acid and alpha-naphthylamic. Both these substances can 
be purchased in any city drug store. 

Let the reagent stand in the well in the mound of flour for 
from ten to twenty minutes. If the flour has been bleached 
the reagent will be coloured pink. If the flour has not been 
bleached there will be no discolouration. 

Under the existing sanitary codes of most American cities 
there is a provision which enables the Health Department of 
most communities to proceed against the thousands of carloads 
of bleached flour which the middle western millers are now 
unloading upon the public. 

The government, which has failed to prevent the bleaching 
of flour for interstate commerce, needs the aid of local health 
departments to help it in its efforts to stamp out this base and 
indefensible practice. 

Flour is bleached to conceal inferiority by making it appear of 
better quality than it is. Most sanitary codes provide against 
the staining, colouring, coating or bleaching of any food product 
for the purpose of concealing inferiority. Under such provisions 
it becomes an easy matter for the corporation counsel of any 
American city to bring action against bleached flour. 

Not satisfied with robbing the wheat of its most indispensable 
mineral elements, millers have still further debauched their in- 
dustry by resorting to electrolytical chemistry in their efforts 
to fool the people. 

That the flour and grain markets of the world are notoriously 
corrupt is not disputed by those on the inside of the situation. 
The extent to which this corruption is destined to be tolerated 
depends entirely upon the capacity of the people to understand 
its heinous nature and apply the remedy that lies at hand. 

I do not insinuate that bleached flour is in itself any more 
responsible for any of the diseases of malnutrition than any other 
form of denatured flour, nor do I intimate that it constitutes more 
than a symptom of the confusion and chaos in which the United 
States permits its food standards to become legally entangled. 

Bleached flour may have nothing to do with infant mortality. 
It does, however, have much to do with sham, fraud, make- 
believe, and as such it must be treated. 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 255 



§ 77 — the "mixed flour" evil 

It was known in the trade long before the outbreak of the 
Spanish War that millions of pounds of adulterated white flour 
were annually sold to bakers. It was the custom of the trade 
to cheapen the so-called patent flour manufactured by the millers 
of wheat by adding varying percentages of corn starch or rice 
starch or potato starch, all of which in bulk were purchasable 
before the war at a price at least one-third less than the price 
of wheat flour. 

During the years from 19 10 to 191 5, for instance, wheat at 
the large centres ranged in price from 771/4. cents to $1.31 per 
bushel, the average price being about $1 per bushel. 

During the same period the price of corn in the same markets 
ranged from 45 cents to 86 cents per bushel, the average price 
being 65 cents per bushel. 

Congress, seeking new revenues during the Spanish War and 
knowing the trickery of the wholesale bakery supply houses, 
included in the Spanish War revenue act of 1898 a provision fix- 
ing a tax of 4 cents a barrel on "mixed flour," together with 
an occupation tax of $12 per annum and providing that the man- 
ufacture and sale of mixed flour shall be conducted under the 
control of the Department of Internal Revenue. 

The Spanish War revenue measure did not concern itself about 
fraud or public health. It was a money-raising proposition. 
It was, however, an eloquent index of a situation, the very ex- 
istence of which had never been suspected by the people. 

Whether it was known or not, nearly all bakers before the 
Hoover regulations were issued requiring them to use wheat 
flour substitutes at three times their value, were producing five- 
and ten-cent loaves with the assistance of corn starch, rice starch, 
potato starch, or other water absorbing ingredients. 

The manufacturers of corn starch or corn flours are them- 
selves on record with the following statement: 

"The philosophy of the present mixed flour law is that the 
mixing of wheat with other cereals or the products thereof is 
a vicious practice, but that upon the payment of certain taxes 



256 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

the miller who is sufficiently conscienceless to do so can make 
almost any sort of mixture. 

"As a matter of detail it should be borne in mind that the 
wholesomeness of mixed flour is not at present protected by 
the law of 1898, but rather the more recent food and drugs act 
(1906). Consequently the removal of the taxing provision could 
by no stretch of the imagination have any effect whatever upon 
the important point of wholesomeness." 

The manufacturers of corn starch declare that "technical re- 
search in this country and practical experience abroad have shown 
that the protein of wheat is sufficiently strong, easily to carry 
through the process of bread-making 20 per cent, added starch, 
be the source of that starch rice, potato or corn." 

Let us examine the philosophy of the corn starch manufac- 
turer who describes his product as "a yeast food flour." I have 
a signed statement in my possession, dated March 10, 191 5, ad- 
dressed to the bakers of the country by one of these corn products 
manufacturers. Because it tells just why corn starch is used 
and throws inside light upon the subject I quote it in full as 
follows : 

"If there ever was a time when in justice to your business you 
should use 'special yeast food flour' it is right now. When you 
can buy 'special yeast food flour' at about the same price as 
wheat flour or probably a little less and when you consider that 
'special yeast food flour' will give you a net profit of at least 
$6 per barrel over the profit you get on your wheat flour, you 
certainly cannot afford to manufacture bread without 'special 
yeast food flour/ 

"Two hundred pounds 'special yeast food flour' with 400 pounds 
water makes 600 pounds material. 

"Two hundred pounds wheat flour with 120 oounds water 
makes 320 pounds material. 

"Other ingredients (lard, salt, etc.) are not figured in this 
computation, being the same in each case. 

"This shows a net gain of 280 pounds material for every bar- 
rel 'special yeast food flour' used. 

"Even figuring that you only get 200 pounds baked bread 
extra from every barrel of 'special yeast food flour' used in your 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 257 

shop and only figuring the cost of bread at 3 cents per pound 
you can readily see that you are making a profit of $6.00. 

"As a matter of fact a barrel of 'special yeast food flour' will 
give you more than 200 pounds of baked bread extra and no 
doubt your cost of bread now is more than 3 cents per pound. 

"It is therefore up to you to decide how much 'special yeast 
food flour' you can use. If you use a barrel a day or 200 barrels a 
month, as other large bakers are using, you still make at least 
$6.00 on each barrel. This means an extra profit of from $180 
to $1,200 a month through the use of 'special yeast food flour' 
alone. 

"Everything that we claim can be demonstrated to your entire 
satisfaction in your own bakery and the results you will get 
will prove that what we have written in this letter is true in 
every sense of the word. 

"Ninety per cent, of the large bakers in this country and 
Canada are using 'special yeast food flour.' 

"If 'special yeast food flour' is wrong then nine out of every 
ten bakers are wrong, which would hardly be possible. 

"Is it not fair to assume that they are using it because they 
make good profit from it? 

"May we, therefore, send you a shipment at once? Your 
early order will be appreciated. Yours very truly, 



"Manager." 

This letter is characteristic of many others now in my posses- 
sion. It reveals the real purpose for which corn starch is utilised 
by bakers in the systematic and ever-increasing effort to lower 
the food value of the staff of life in order that constantly in- 
creasing profits may be obtained. 



§ 78 — THE DEVITALISED FIVE-CENT LOAF 

The manner in which the staff of life can be manipulated at 
will for commercial purposes indicates the necessity of estab- 
lishing an official definition of the word "bread," together with 
means of controlling its integrity. 



258 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

In February and March, 191 5, much interest was aroused con- 
cerning the use of "plaster of Paris" in the production of the 
bread made by one of the largest bakers in the United States. 

Considerable light was shed upon the secret use of a mineral 
mixture in the making of bread in Boston, New York, and other 
American cities, when Referee Nussbaum, at the inquiry of New 
York State into an alleged conspiracy to increase the price of 
bread from five to six cents a loaf, on the ground that war prices 
made bread ingredients higher, probed into the secrets of whole- 
sale bakers. 

Prior to the taking of testimony in the bread case, at the office 
of Deputy Attorney-General Alfred L. Becker, 299 Broadway, 
New York City, Inspector James O. Jordan of the Boston Board 
of Health made a report to Mayor Curley, in which he asserted 
that bakeries in New York and Massachusetts were making 
bread which contained calcium sulphate, otherwise known as 
gypsum or plaster of Paris, materials used in making plaster 
casts. 

When questioned concerning the truth of Inspector Jordan's 
report the vice-president of one of the largest baking concerns 
of the world, admitted at the state's hearing that such a product 
was in use, that it had been employed for three years prior to 
the date of the state's investigation, and that it had been 
patented. 

He justified its use on the ground that it enabled the baker 
to leaven his dough before excessive fermentation took place. 

"Excessive fermentation," he said, "is destructive of practi- 
cally all food values in the ingredients used in modern baking." 
He argued, therefore, that the only bread which retains any food 
value is the bread that contains this patented powder, for the 
reason that prior to its discovery all bakers' bread was worthless 
because of the destruction of practically all of its food value. 

We have examined the evidence that shows white bread is 
not a bone-builder. 

We have examined the evidence that proves pigeons fed on 
white bread suffer a loss of the lime salts of their bones even 
to the extent of perforation of the skull. 

We know that Voit established this fact as long ago as 1882. 

According to the report of the Boston Board of Health on the 



HOW 'BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 259 

composition of this "plaster of Paris" powder the samples ex- 
amined contained calcium sulphate, 24 parts; sodium chloride, 
24.90 parts; ammonium chloride, 11.50 parts; starch, 30 parts. 

The testimony taken before Referee Nussbaum placed on 
record the admission of one of the most prominent white bread 
bakers in the world that white bread is worthless bread, devoid 
of food value unless it contains a certain chemical compound 
manufactured under the direction and control of certain com- 
mercial corporations. 

When the people are informed that the way to restore the 
food value of white bread is to add to it a compound of gypsum 
or plaster of Paris in amounts however small, all the indictments 
charged against the broken staff of life are unwittingly confirmed. 

The highest of high prices paid for denatured bread means 
nothing to the well fed or to those in comfortable circumstances, 
but to the average American family, whose daily diet consists 
largely of bread, it means decay. 

The poor and the rich together are consuming an inadequate 
substitute for wheat in the form of white flour food, but the 
poor, who need all the honest nourishment they can get, con- 
sume by far the greatest quantity of this foodless form of food. 

In New York City the common people know that the Euro- 
pean war early in 191 5 was merely an excuse for advancing 
the price of bread to six cents. It was because they cried out 
against this advance that the attorney general of New York 
State interfered. 

They know that it was due to his interference that the price 
was not only returned to five cents, but that one year later, 
February, 19 16, when the raw materials from which bread is 
made were bringing even higher prices than when the six cent 
rate was arbitrarily fixed, one large concern in New York City 
sold the same bread made by the same people at four cents a loaf. 

By its clamour the public had affected the price of bread while 
remaining in ignorance concerning its devitalised character. 
Growing children who eat bread three or four times a day are 
not concerned in an advance of one cent a loaf or in a reduction 
of one cent a loaf. 

The bread inquiry of the attorney general of New York State, 
through the extraordinary admissions which it provoked on the 



260 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

part of the bakers themselves, shocked and for a time confounded 
the entire white flour industry of the United States. 



§ 79 — A PAID ADVERTISEMENT 

Immediately following the disclosures made by Inspector Jor- 
dan and Referee Nussbaum, the following newspaper advertise- 
ment appeared under this caption : "About Four Years Ago the 
Blank Baking Company Engaged Three Trained Men and 
Instructed Them to Devote Their Time in Search for a Method 
of Making Better Bread." This Resulted in the Greatest Dis- 
covery Ever Made in the History of the Bread Business and is 
a Great Boon for the Benefit of Humanity. 

"In view of the inaccurate, misleading and really absurd news- 
paper statements that have been made regarding the methods em- 
ployed by our company we wish first to state a fact within the 
knowledge of every housewife, that yeast is a living organism 
and in order to live and multiply, and thereby leaven the dough, 
the yeast must have food. 

"In the old process this food was the flour, sugar, and other 
constituents of the dough. The yeast consumed a certain por- 
tion of these materials and converted them into alcohol and other 
products, including a certain gas which raised the bread and 
made it light. 

"Under the new discovery, however, minute amounts of cer- 
tain salts are added which serve in place of a part of this food 
which, under the old method, the yeast consumes. 

"In the old process a portion of the flour, particularly the 
glutenous part, was broken down by the yeast and thus valuable 
nutritive properties were lost. 

"By the new process this does not take place, but, on the 
contrary, a greater percentage of the natural gluten of the wheat 
is retained in the baked loaf. 

"In order that exact minute quantities might be properly in- 
troduced, first into the water and then into the dough, these 
salts were made up into a powder. 

"Of this powder a very minute amount is added to the 1,500 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 261 

pounds of material — flour, sugar, milk, vegetable oil, yeast, salt 
and water — which constitutes a standard size dough in our 
bakeries. 

"The result is that there is left in the bread four one-hun- 
dredths of I per cent, of calcium salts which are the identical 
salts contained in all natural waters and practically all vege- 
table and animal products. 

"On a percentage basis fresh milk contains more than four 
times as much natural calcium salts as if contained in the form 
of the artificial calcium salts put into Blank's bread. 

"In other words, one glass of milk contains as much natural 
calcium salts as two loaves of Blank's bread contains of arti- 
ficial calcium salts. Cheese contains about thirty times as much, 
peas contain about three times as much, greens twelve times as 
much, beans five times as much, chocolate three times as much, 
turnips twice as much." 

The advertisement drew no contrast between the organic cal- 
cium compounds found in natural foods and the laboratory 
product introduced in the bread referred to. It confined its as- 
sertions to the claim that the calcium thus introduced made 
bread better, but it said nothing of the natural organic com- 
pounds of iron, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, manganese, 
fluorine, etc., which the yeast powder did not restore to the white 
bread described as "a great boon for the benefit of humanity." 

The advertisement went on : 

"Medical men have shown that a normal adult drinks in twen- 
ty-four hours three and a half quarts of water. A twenty-four 
hour supply of many natural waters would contain as much cal- 
cium sulphate as is found in ten loaves of Blank's bread. 

"The above citations are sufficient to show that the salts are 
present in such small amounts that no question can arise in 
any one's mind not antagonistic to the real facts that they are 
not used for any purpose of adulteration or deception. 

"Some of the reasons for their use are as follows: 

"In the leavening of bread the yeast, besides forming the gas, 
carbon dioxide, which makes the bread light, also forms alcohol 
and certain by-products which in the similar process of fermen- 
tation of grains to form whiskey we call 'fusel oil/ 

"This fusel oil is a very poisonous and rather disagreeable 



262 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

smelling oil. This action takes place whenever bread is raised 
by yeast whether in the household or in the bakery. 

"The amount of fusel oil and certain other disagreeable acid 
products thus formed is very small, but has its effect upon the 
bread and certainly does not make the bread any more 
wholesome. 

"In the new process the amount of these fusel oil products 
is diminished almost to the vanishing point. The result is a 
bread with better taste, odor, color, texture, and flavor, and 
a more wholesome bread because of the absence in this pro- 
cess of these small amounts of objectionable products." 

These statements really mean that the many millions of loaves 
of bread baked by the Blank bakery prior to the discovery of 
its yeast food powder contained the very poisonous and rather 
disagreeable smelling fusel oil and certain other disagreeable acid 
products which develop in all bread in which the Blank yeast 
powder is not used. 

§ 80 — "the lid is off" 

The advertisement of the Blank bakery, published apparently 
for the purpose of neutralising the published report of Inspector 
Jordan and the facts disclosed by Referee Nussbaum continued 
as follows: 

"From the above citations regarding the natural occurrence 
of calcium sulphate in foods it would be evident to every one 
that calcium sulphate is perfectly harmless as it is present as 
a natural constituent of so many foods that are daily consumed 
by the people. 

"In fact, we might go further than this, as the opinion among 
the best medical authorities is that the food supply of the 
people does not contain sufficient calcium salts which are so 
necessary in the formation of bones, teeth and other tissues., 
especially to growing children. 

"Physiologists tell us that an adult man should have in his 
food one and a half grams of lime as lime salts per day. To 
obtain this amount from bread alone he would have to eat seven 
loaves of Blank's bread, while one quart of milk would furnish 
more than the required amount. 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 263 

"It has become a common practice in the purification of water 
supply for the cities to add to the water small amounts of calcium 
hypochlorite. This practice is heartily indorsed by all public 
health and medical authorities. A percentage of added lime put 
in in this way is in all cases a larger amount than the added lime 
salts in Blank's bread. 

"We know that Blank's bread as made to-day is the best bread 
in the world ; better bread than you can make in your own 
kitchen, and better bread than you can buy except under the name 
Blank. 

"Our company has done more for the baking trade in advancing 
modern ideas in baking and in the erection of modern plants 
than any concern in the trade. 

"The lid is off, we have nothing to hide, never have had any- 
thing to hide and you may feel secure in the use of Blank's bread 
and know when you buy it you will use the best obtainable. No 
better or cheaper food exists. Feed it to your children in gener- 
ous portions. It is good for them." 

(Signed) "BLANK BAKING CO." 

This advertisement did not inform the public that the standard 
bushel of sixty pounds of wheat produces fifty-nine pounds of 
whole wheat meal, one pound being lost in the form of moisture 
through evaporation in the grinding, and that the same bushel of 
wheat produces but forty-five pounds of white flour, showing a 
loss of fifteen pounds of the most vital elements of the wheat, 
including more than 75 per cent, of its total mineral content — a 
loss not made up in the baking of white bread by the use of any 
patented powder. 

It did not inform the public that every barrel of white flour 
represents a loss of sixty-five pounds of the most precious ele- 
ments of the wheat — elements which are thrown to the hogs 
and which are not restored to white bread by the addition of 
any patented powder. 

§ 81 IMITATION GRAHAM 

Following are the standard bakery ingredients of white bread 
and whole wheat bread at pre-war prices : 



264 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

196 pounds white flour $4.00 

124 pounds water 00 

4/4 pounds salt 05 

2 pounds sugar 11 

2 pounds yeast 10 

8 pounds compound 80 

Total $5.06 

This mixture represents a total cost of $5.06, which produces 
180 loaves to retail at 10 cents each, or 360 loaves to retail at 
five cents each. 

The ten-cent loaves when scaled off before baking weigh thirty 
ounces. During the baking process they lose three ounces by 
evaporation, coming out of the oven weighing approximately 
twenty-seven ounces. 

The five-cent loaves when scaled off before baking weigh fifteen 
ounces. When they come out of the oven they weigh between 
thirteen and thirteen and one-half ounces. 

The gross profit to the baker with flour at $4 a barrel is the 
difference between $18, the selling price of 180 loaves at ten cents 
a loaf, and $5.06, the actual cost, or $12.94. 

One large baker, with whom I am familiar, paid in January, 
1916, $5.50 a barrel for his white flour. At this price his gross 
profits on each barrel of flour was $11.44 on an investment of 
$6.56, including cost of sugar, salt, compound and yeast. 

There are many miserable substitutes for honest whole wheat 
bread which masquerade under a whole wheat label. They are 
soft, soggy, brown, and, one would say, if it were not for their 
poor flavour, almost tasteless. Certainly such loaves of so-called 
whole wheat bread can never inspire adult or child to an appe- 
tite for more. 

Such bread discourages bread reform. Nevertheless there is 
on the market, in addition to a few genuine whole wheat loaves, 
a near approach to whole wheat which is made according to the 
following formula : 

257 pounds whole wheat, 

154 pounds water, 

14 pounds molasses, 

5 pounds salt, 

7 pounds compound, 

5 pounds yeast. 



1 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 265> 

!■ I !■■ I — ^— " I I — '■ ' ■ ■■■ » ■■ ■■ ■■ ■■ II II I I ■ ■'■■■■ — I I -n I M— ■■ ■ ■■■ ■J ill I I 1.1 ■■ ■ ■■» ■ ■ « ■■ ■■— I! , r 

This quantity of raw material produces 289 loaves, which re- 
tail at ten cents each. These loaves are scaled off to weigh 24^4 
ounces. Losing 2^/2 ounces in the oven by evaporation, they 
weigh a scant 22 ounces after baking. 

The significant feature of these figures to the bread consumer 
lies in the fact that it costs $1 a barrel less to manufacture a. 
whole wheat meal than it does to manufacture white patent 
flour, and yet the millers of whole wheat meal charge the baker 
$1 more for their products than they do for patent flour, mak- 
ing an arbitrary difference of $2 in favour of their own pocket- 
book. 

In other words, they obtain $2 a barrel more for a product 
which costs $1 less. 

When bakers take the stand and admit under oath that white 
bread is foolish bread, without food value, they render a service 
to the community, but when they say that the way to restore the 
food value of white bread is to load it up with plaster of Paris 
or gypsum, or any other form of patented powder, they deceive 
themselves, they deceive their bread, and they deceive those who 
eat it. 



§ 82 — PHYSICIANS SEEK IN VAIN 

Physicians have sought in vain for substances that can renovate 
the broken human body. Failing to find them they have explored 
other fields and we have, as a result, antitoxins, serums, and 
germicides. 

Commercial scientists know that they cannot put back into 
bread from the hands of chemists those things that come only 
from the hands of God. 

Colostrum, the first food of the human being, is as we have 
seen the first food of all mammals, yet its exact role is not fully 
understood by scientists. From the nature of its composition, 
its corpuscles, salts and colloids, fats, sugars, proteins and 
anti-bodies, it is inferred that it furnishes to the new-born child, 
during its adjustment to its new surroundings and the full ex- 
pansion of its lungs and the awakening of its digestive pro- 



266 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

cesses, an adequate nourishment of a character similar to that 
which it received from the placenta as a foetus. 

Commercial scientists might as well try to produce synthetic 
colostrum, synthetic blood, a synthetic spinal cord, a synthetic 
nervous system, a synthetic brain, and a synthetic soul as synthetic 
bread. The most colossal impertinence now visible in this world 
of confusion is the effort of man to duplicate in ignorance 
and presumption, by a process of extravagant theorising, the 
handiwork of the Creator. 

An army of investigators has proved that artificial mineralisa- 
tion with respect to food is impossible. 

The extensive research conducted by M. S. Maslow at the 
Institute for Experimental Medicine at Petrograd, with regard 
to the biologic importance of phosphorus for the growing organ- 
ism and its action on the intracellular ferments, would alone be 
sufficient to confound the plaster of Paris scientists if they had 
ever heard of it. 

Apparently really scientific experiments, proving that synthetic 
phosphates cannot be substituted for the highly complex organic 
phosphorus compounds of natural food and that synthetic phos- 
phates should not be given for therapeutic purposes, have no 
meaning for men who by adding calcium sulphate to bread would 
have the world believe that they transform its inadequacy into 
the wholesomest of human foods. 

The scientist responsible for the plaster-of-Paris bread ingre- 
dient has given to the press this interview: 

"In the milling of flour more and more of the outside of the 
grain has been taken off in order to get absolutely white flour, 
thus accounting for the contention that flour is not as nutritious 
as formerly. 

"By the addition of lime and other beneficial salts the qualities 
removed in the effort to get white flour have been restored to the 
wheat and other advantages have been noted. 

"My associates in the laboratory work maintain that our find- 
ings have resulted in the most important food discovery in years. 

"The so-called secret process was kept so only because of a 
desire to have world-wide patents on the invention before courting 
publicity." 

In his testimony at the attorney general's inquiry, 199 Broad- 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 267 

way, Tuesday, March 2nd, 19 15, the vice-president of the Blank 
Baking Company declined to reveal the process which he claimed 
as his, being content with saying that it had accomplished great 
good for humanity. 

There is other testimony, dating from the year 1490 B. C, on 
this subject of white flour destruction, which the attorney gen- 
eral's inquiry did not record. 

In the twenty-sixth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviti- 
cus, or Vaicra, as the Hebrews call it, it is written that as punish- 
ment for the crimes of man their bread would undergo degenera- 
tion; that the staff of life would be broken; that no matter to 
what extent it might be manipulated, even to the extent of hav- 
ing ten women oversee its baking in the same oven, and no mat- 
ter how carefully it might be weighed out, the people would eat 
only to find it a worthless and foodless food. 

Food that does not fill is not food. These are the exact words 
of the prophecy : 

"After I shall have broken the staff of your bread, so that ten 
women shall bake your bread in one oven, and give it out by 
weight and you shall eat and shall not be filled." 

Uttered 3,408 years ago, this prophecy has been fulfilled. Its 
fulfilment stole in upon humanity quietly, stealthfully, unnoted. 
Twentieth century science has demonstrated its truth. The 
microscope and the test tube have confirmed the description of 
Leviticus of the white bread of 1918. 



§ 83 — DOLLARS DICTATE TO SCIENCE 

The work conducted, 1914, 191 5 and 1916, to determine the 
ravages of a demineralised diet, by Goldberg, Warring, Willets 
and Wheeler, at orphanages in Jackson, Mississippi, and at the 
farm of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, was not designed to 
disclose truths which the millers would at once confine in a com- 
mercial straight jacket. 

But — their power over science is complete, and so when the 
United States Public Health Service, April, 1916, published a 



268 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

warning bulletin by Voegtlin, Sullivan and Myers, they had no 
difficulty in silencing it. 

That Government bulletin declared that the roller mill system 
deprived flour of valuable food constituents. That if animals are 
fed on highly milled wheat and corn they will die within a month 
or two, whereas they will live in perfect health for many months 
on an exclusive diet of unmilled wheat or corn. 

It also described the dangers incident to the excessive use of 
baking powder, which destroys the vitamines of the grain. 

The flour millers immediately swooped down upon the United 
States Public Health Service, whereupon in September, 1916, a 
"correcting" bulletin was issued. The government had been terri- 
fied into acquiescence by the dignity and power of the industry 
offended. 

This "correcting" bulletin, for the consolation of the millers, 
told the people to be sure to obtain an adequate mixed diet to 
supply sufficient of the essential dietary components outside of 
the refined cereal contained in the diet, but not to be worried over 
the dangers of white flour as previously described. 

The millers asserted that the Government bulletin had oc- 
casioned so much alarm that the production of highly milled 
flours had fallen off nearly 25 per cent., and the flour industry 
had been hit hard in a financial way; hence the effort of the gov- 
ernment to re-establish the prestige of refined highly milled wheat 
and corn. 

No wonder Assistant Secretary Vrooman of the Department of 
Agriculture declared, May, 1917, "The most powerful food lobby 
ever assembled at the Capitol, is here stimulating press agents 
and commercial scientists to promote the interests that gamble in 
human health and that seek by every means in their power to 
prevent the government's control of the grain elevators and patent 
flour mills of the country." 

No wonder the Life Extension Institute declared in a bulletin : 
"Destruction of food is an injury to our country just as positively 
as destruction of munition or arms, and the commonest and most 
inexcusable destruction of food is the milling of wheat." 

No wonder Professor Alonzo E. Taylor, Herbert Hoover's 
assistant in the Food Administration, asserted, "A j6 per cent, 
flour represents the peak of the curve of utilisation ; the other 24 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 269 

per cent, of the grain would be wasted if consumed by the human 
being." 

No wonder the millers released for publication this "peak of 
the curve of utilisation" story to newspapers and magazines. 
The sophistry of this desperate effort to save patent flour for the 
multitude is as transparent as it is false. 

In 1889 G. Bunge, professor of physiological chemistry at Yale 
University, demonstrated that the unabsorbed protein of whole 
wheat bread was 30 per cent. Of course this unabsorbed protein 
was not utilised, but Bunge also demonstrated that the unabsorbed 
protein of lentils was 40 per cent., of carrots 39 per cent., of po- 
tatoes 32 per cent., of cabbage 18 per cent. 

If "the peak of the curve of utilisation" were applied to other 
food as the millers would have it applied to patent flour, we 
would not eat lentils, carrots, potatoes or cabbage without refining 
them as patent flour is refined. 

Bunge also demonstrated that the unabsorbed protein of milk 
ranges from 7 to 12 per cent., for which reason we should refine 
milk also before permitting our children to consume it. 

"We must see," declared Bunge, "that the diet of human beings 
does not lack woody fibre, bran or cellulose. The excessive fear 
of 'indigestible' foods which prevails among the wealthier classes 
leads to debility of the intestinal muscular walls." 

Whole wheat contains 2.5 per cent, cellulose. 

"Do not eat cellulose," cry the millers and their scientists. But 
strawberries contain cellulose to the extent of 2.3 per cent., 
radishes 2.8 per cent., beans 3.6 per cent., grapes 3.6 per cent., 
pears 4.3 per cent., raspberries 6.7 per cent., raisins 7 per cent., 
hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts and hickory nuts between 3 and 7 
per cent. ; asparagus, canteloupe, watermelon, mushrooms, apples, 
and celery contain as much cellulose as whole wheat. 

Let us therefore eat none of these foods if we would bask 
under the shadow of "the peak of the curve of utilisation." 

We must eat no more fruits or vegetables, and particularly 
must we avoid spinach, and lettuce, if we accept the warnings 
of men upon whose successful efforts to protect us from cellulose 
depend their fortunes. 

The scientists know that the ability of the body to absorb 



270 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

every atom of the various nutritive elements of any given food 
does not and cannot determine the value of that food. 

They know that the truck horse, the dairy cow and the beef 
steer are unable to absorb any more of the wheat, the corn or 
the oat than is man himself. 

"The peak of the curve of utilisation" suddenly loses its power 
when they sell cattle feed to live stock men. They know that the 
unabsorbed per cent, of grain foods is so heavy in the case of 
animals that the droppings of a single steer are sufficient to sustain 
a hog. 

They know that the United States Government recommends to 
farmers the raising of hogs in this manner as an economy. They 
tell us that even a 76 per cent, flour will not keep indefinitely and 
that the loss through decomposition would greatly exceed the 
gain secured by milling all of the wheat. 

Again, as we have seen and as we shall continue to see, they 
lie, but all commercial lies will reveal themselves to our children 
when their chicken feeding experiments are conducted in the 
schools. 



§ 84 — THE AWAKENING OF THE TEACHER 

Through the awakening of the teacher the children will learn 
why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins; why all nature is 
conspiring to teach them the folly of trespass against the nat- 
ural law in respect to food; why there is something erroneous 
about the popular conception of gluttony when it is looked upon 
as the act by which an African entering a watermelon-eating 
contest succeeds in so distending himself with watermelon that 
he can't walk. 

They will learn that gluttony is the deliberate and wilful act 
based on ignorance, indifference, or sloth, whereby an otherwise 
rational human creature refuses in his selection of food to 
recognise the fact that the laws of nutrition which apply to the 
health and success of the stock farm also apply to him, by reason 
of which he thoughtlessly eats and causes his children to eat 
things he would not feed to poultry, horses, cattle, sheep or hogs. 

They will learn that it is quite impossible as a regular daily 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 271 

occupation to eat too much of the right kind of food; that the 
right kind of food nourishes and invigorates ; that the wrong 
kind of food tears down ; that true invigoration is reposeful and 
normal, and is never tempted to excess. 

In recalling the experiences of the Kronprinz Welhelm poison 
squad they will contrast the facts developed by feeding 500 men 
throughout an enforced experience that endured for 255 days with 
the nonsense of the short-time nutritional experiments such as 
those conducted in commercial laboratories and by the referee 
board, in which after a few short weeks' diet on some one sus- 
pected food or food adjunct a whitewashing report, which means 
nothing, is given to the world. 

They will grasp the fact that at the end of 150 days a clean 
bill of health could have been given to the food of the sailors of 
the Kronprinz Wilhelm, thereby reducing that now classic episode 
to a resultless short term "scientific" experiment. 

They will grasp the fact that the ordeal suffered by the Ger- 
man sailors went beyond the 150-day limit, and that even if it had 
ended at the termination of 200 days a complete whitewash of 
the food of the men, while still possible under the so-called scien- 
tific methods usually employed, might have had some curious 
doubts to explain away. 

They will grasp the fact that at the end of 255 days there was 
no further room for doubt. 

When school children begin, as a matter of classroom duty, to 
look into their own mouths the facts concerning their teeth will be 
correlated with their own chicken-feeding experiments and inter- 
preted to the physical betterment of the nation. 



§ 85 — MORE TESTIMONY 

The natural bond between the chicken feeding experiment of 
the school children and the school children's teeth is not difficult 
to locate. 

Dr. Louis Goldstein, New York City, says: 

"After examining the teeth of not less than 400 school children 
in my home neighbourhood here in the Bronx I have yet to see 



272 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

a perfect set of six-year molars (first four permanent teeth to ap- 
pear in childhood). These teeth in nearly every instance were 
entirely decayed. I have never observed a perfect set of teeth in 
any American child and have but one adult patient showing ex- 
tremely good teeth. She is a young woman." 

Dr. Burtice E. Lawton, New York City, declares: "Our faulty 
teeth are undoubtedly the result of an impoverished diet. We see 
many defective teeth among those in the best walks of life. 
Heredity does not seem to greatly increase the condition, for 
at present I have a patient undergoing treatment — a girl — who is 
the child of strong, robust parents. 

"For the past three years I have observed her teeth on an 
average of once a month. Her teeth have virtually been starved 
and are suffering from the absence of a sufficient quantity of lime 
salts. Had she been fed on good, old-fashioned whole grain 
breads and breakfast foods when a youngster she would not be 
compelled to come under my care now." 

Dr. E. A. Crostic, New York City, declares: "No one in 
New York City is eating the proper food these days. Foreigners 
who come here with a history of natural foods behind them pos- 
sess solid tissues. 

"Thirty years ago when the occasion arose people could sit in 
a dentist chair and have several teeth extracted without wincing. 
To-day, so lacking in nerves, energy and vitality are our women, 
that almost any of them after the ordeal of one or two extractions 
is on the verge of collapse." 

Dr. Robert W. Taggert, New York City, declares : "The six- 
year molars are decayed and in many cases completely gone by the 
time the child attains the age of seven or eight years. It is almost 
impossible to save these teeth in any instance. 

"German parents, who grew up on the whole wheat and rye 
bread of their native land, prior to the introduction of refined 
bread, have better teeth than their children." 

Dr. Samuel C. Newman, New York City, declares : "You can- 
not beat the Italians for good teeth. They rarely have more than 
one or two teeth missing, the others being perfect and as hard as 
rocks. To drill into their hard tooth substance means to dull burr 
after burr in the attempt. 

"Among the city children of my locality I find soft and sensi- 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 273 

tive teeth. The six-year molars are usually gone and in some 
instances I have observed that they do not last longer than six 
months after their eruption." 

Dr. I. H. Knopf, New York City, declares : "The Italians, who 
do not eat dainty food, have fine teeth. This fact is significant." 

Dr. Anton J. Haecker, New York City, declares: "Twenty- 
five years ago I had the opportunity of examining the teeth of 
the school children of Worms, Germany ; 250 families, existing 
entirely on whole grain and vegetable foods, were living within a 
school district at that time. 

"I could pick out the children of these families from among the 
others readily for the reason that their cheeks were rosy and they 
were the picture of health. The fine condition of their teeth as 
compared with the others was little short of amazing. 

"Their diet consisted exclusively of whole grain bread, vege- 
tables and fruit. The inhabitants of the famous Black Forest 
district of Germany and the lumbermen of the Vogelsburg moun- 
tains have wonderful teeth and are in rugged health. 

"On Sunday quite often one pound of meat must suffice for 
the appetite of eight people, the main foods being black bread, 
potatoes and rye flour soups." 

Dr. W. E. Andrews, New York City, declares: "The teeth 
of Slavs, Bulgars, Russians, and Poles are ordinarily perfect. I 
have lately seen the grinders of an old Slav, 61 years of age, who 
works in a nearby coal yard. Not a tooth was missing. His 
childhood diet of black bread and fish had given him an inde- 
structible tooth structure." 

Dr. C. R. Kelly, New York City, declares: "Periods of dis- 
ease in children marked for general nutritional disturbances in 
which tooth nourishment is for a time completely shut off leave 
their traces like sign-posts on developing teeth." 

Dr. Charles A. Dubois, New York City, declares : "The elimina- 
tion of starch and sugary foods, including candies and syrups, 
from the diet is essential to the treatment of pyorrhea. There is 
no such thing as local tooth disease. The condition that leads to 
decay is always systemic." 

Dr. F. A. Sterling, New York City, declares: "Natives of 
Africa whom I have examined have possessed teeth in perfect 
condition, due entirely to their living on coarse, natural foods. 



274 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

I have observed that the nearer people are to primitive nature the 
better are their teeth. Savages all have good teeth. The coloured 
race, particularly those living on whole corn meal and the un- 
refined sugar cane diet of the southern plantations, have good 
teeth. 

"In one generation, in advancing from the southern corn fields 
and cane brakes, the teeth of our coloured children become very 
poor." 

Dr. J. Archambeau, New York City, declares: "The people 
of the British West Indies (Jamaica), subsist on yams, vegetables, 
bananas, sugar cane, in abundance, a little salt fish and very little 
meat. Decayed teeth among these people are very rare. Most 
of their teeth look as though they were fashioned from ivory. 
Only poorly nourished people develop pyorrhea. 

"Since the natives of the British West Indies have begun to 
import American delicacies I have had much fear for the future 
condition of their teeth." 



§ 86 — COURAGE OF SENIOR SURGEON BANKS 

In 191 7 the corn flour millers ardently supported the recom- 
mendation of the Federal food authorities to mix from 15 to 30 
per cent, of denatured corn flour with 85 or 70 per cent, of 
denatured wheat flour. 

The millers of denatured wheat flour vigorously opposed these 
recommendations of their corn rivals and employed chemists to 
combat them. These two opposing trade interests thus provoked 
a bitter controversy over the mixing of two products, both de- 
natured, both of them used on an ever-increasing scale. 

Into this controversy crept no hint of the warnings of the 
United States Public Health Service and the Life Extension In- 
stitute. 

Testifying for the millers, Robert M. French of the French- 
Pancose Laboratory employed by the New York Produce Ex- 
change, went before the Senate and House Committees on Agri- 
culture, telling them corn and wheat ought not to be mixed; 
that whole wheat would not keep ; that whole corn meal would not 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 275 

keep, and that all the advantages obtained by eating the whole 
grain would therefore be offset by losses due to spoiling. 

Finally the campaign of the millers of denatured flour to 
force their standards upon the army, navy and civilian populations 
of the United States became so scandalous that Senior Surgeon 
Charles E. Banks of the United States Public Health Service is- 
sued a statement which, notwithstanding its withering force, has 
been consistently disregarded by all American authorities. 

Undaunted by the war emergency pretexts which ever tend to 
silence even the voices of outspoken men, Dr. Banks courageously 
and valiantly said : 

"I read with considerable amazement but not with surprise the 
statement made by Robert M. French, a chemist in the employ 
of the Produce Exchange, evolving another of the various forms 
or THROWING A SCARE into the public mind lately adopted 
by the patent flour interests. 

"French says, 'If the quacks and jingoes who preach whole 
wheat flour were to have their way bread of any kind would be- 
come a rarity/ 

"This is his special form of scare. Another scare recently ap- 
pearing in the Northwestern Miller, a journal devoted to the 
interests of patent flour manufacturers, amounts in effect to the 
statement that whole wheat flour will produce typhus fever. 

"Again, a large miller in a public interview threw another scare 
into the people by declaring regretfully that he was afraid if whole 
wheat were used for bread it might cause dyspepsia. 

"Still another contemptible insinuation published in a flour 
trade journal was that the Belgians were starving because they 
could only get whole wheat bread — contemptible, I say, because 
this sorely stricken people can scarcely obtain anything to eat, 
and their tragedy is being exploited to frighten the American 
public into swallowing henceforth the only material the millers 
intend to make, unless compelled to do otherwise, a starch flour — 
just starch and nothing else of consequence. 

"The present milling percentage reached in producing this 
patent flour does not exceed 75 per cent, of the grain, thus dis- 
carding an entire quarter of the crop as a tribute to the white 
flour fetich. This quarter of the crop, containing the rich ele- 
ments of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, iron and the other 



276 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

mineral salts and vitamines of the grain, is sold by the millers 
as 'feed' for animals. The tissue-building elements of the grain 
thus go to the animals while the millers sell for human consump- 
tion the starch as flour. 

"It is not necessary to confuse the lay public with the physio- 
chemics of the digestion of starch except to say that starch is not 
an element of the body and to get anything out of starch for the 
body it must be converted into something else. 

"The end result is what is the matter with the American people 
to-day, physically forty inches around the waist at the age of 
forty and so on, an inch for every year, a puff for each eye, and a 
bag for each cheek. The present milling methods are only thirty- 
eight years old and were devised for mechanical reasons solely 
because the old stone grinding was too slow. There was nothing 
of a dietetic or hygienic character which demanded this improved 
roller process to take care of the rapidly increasing size of our 
crops. 

"Not content with this new process, which simply got out the 
starch more readily, the millers later invented an artificial bleach- 
ing process for the purpose of further refining the already deathly 
pallor of their product. This is refinement run mad and the house- 
wives of America have been led through ignorance to believe that 
the whiter the flour the better or purer the product. 

"A pale, anaemic generation of people has grown up under its 
continued use, as any medical man can testify who has had ex- 
tended opportunities to examine hundreds and thousands of 
American boys physically, comparing them with the youths of the 
nations of Europe who have a whole grain diet. 

"Our forefathers ate whole wheat bread for nearly three 
centuries, and if the absurd shrieks of the patent flour prophets of 
disaster were worth controversy it would only be to say that our 
hardy ancestors, men of brawn and vigour, who knew nothing of 
the bled-white wheat flour sold to-day, ought to have starved or 
died of typhus fever, and the lucky survivors should have built 
a museum to exhibit the last loaf of the old, deadly bread for their 
descendants to gaze upon. 

"These athletic grandsires of ours who got the elements from 
the wheat which produce muscle, blood, bone, and nerve tissue, 
enabling them to do pioneer work and to live to old age, might 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 277 

well ask the starch contingents what sort of tissue starch makes, 
advising them that if starch has any advantage in this line it 
would be well to present evidence of its superiority instead of 
abusing the champions of whole wheat as quacks. 

"These patent flour people are not quacks. They are rather 
apostles of the doctrine of frightfulness, and if they are success- 
ful in forcing the American public to live on denatured cereals, 
America will eventually become a race of physical degenerates." 



§ 87 — THE TRADE CHALLENGES TRADE LIES 

Dr. Banks thundered in vain. At Hotel Sherman, Chicago, 
May, 191 7, the American Master Bakers, at a convention assailed 
all proposals to mill a larger percentage of whole wheat. They 
went so far as to send a message to Herbert C. Hoover, disap- 
proving of any official action to compel the milling of a higher per- 
centage than 81. 

At the convention Solomon Westerfeld, vice-president of the 
New York Retail Grocers' Association declared: "The American 
stomach will not stand whole wheat bread." 

The convention then passed resolutions declaring, "Whole 
wheat will not keep ; it spoils." Yet during the four years pre- 
ceding that extraordinary resolution the quantity of whole wheat 
bread baked weekly in New York City and Brooklyn had in- 
creased to 50,000 loaves. 

The American stomach not only stood this whole wheat but 
the whole wheat did not spoil. 

The irony of all these sordid, selfish and unpatriotic protests 
against the physical welfare of the American people is disclosed 
when we learn that while the millers were lobbying not only in 
Washington, but all over the country, in their desperate efforts 
to perpetuate the old profitable system, the Washburn-Crosby 
Company were circulating hundreds of thousands of booklets, 
advertising the merits of its Wheat-A-Laxa Whole Wheat Flour, 
containing 100 per cent, of the wheat. 

As if to rebuke the hypocrisy of the millers, the Washburn- 
Crosby Company declares : "Our whole wheat flour fulfils to 



278 THIS FAM ISHING WORLD 

the letter the requirements of the United States Health authori- 
ties. Being the whole of the wheat it contains all the life-sus- 
taining elements of wheat in sufficient amounts to supply the pro- 
portion of the daily requirements of the body in readily di- 
gestible form. 

"It represents what our great instinctive food and dietetic 
experts through all ages have affirmed — that whole wheat flour 
is a complete food for the human body." 

Here was another kind of commercial voice crying in the wil- 
derness, but America's food authorities could not hear it. 

The Washburn-Crosby Company by its own confession does not 
believe that whole wheat bread killed Belgians, as reported by 
Herbert Hoover, or that American stomachs will not stand whole 
wheat, or that whole wheat produces typhus fever, dyspepsia, 
and will not keep. 

At the same hour W. K. Kellogg, advertising "Krumbles," 
made of ioo per cent, whole wheat, published the following ad- 
vertisement : 

"Krumbles makes sturdy boys because it is made of the whole 
of the durum wheat with all its mineral salts, the thing that 
doctors say all children need." 

The Shredded Wheat Company declared at the same time that 
whole wheat was an ideal food, easily digested, containing all the 
salts necessary to the health of the human body. 

The Postum Cereal Company, manufacturing Grape Nuts, 
has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to exploit what it 
calls a whole wheat product. 

The H-O Company, manufacturing thousands of tons of 
"Force," made of whole wheat, denies that whole wheat will kill 
Belgians, produce typhus fever, or cause dyspepsia. 

The Bennett Biscuit Company, manufacturing Wheatsworth 
Biscuits, made of whole wheat, stands like another tower of 
might against the selfishness of industries whose hearts remain 
hard even under the lamentations of war. 

The Pillsbury Company, putting one of its by-products into 
fancy packages, and spreading the truth concerning its medicinal 
qualities through the advertising pages of newspapers, magazines 
and medical journals, contradicts sweepingly all the statements 
of the commercial scientists and flour millers, whose treacherous 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 279 

and flimsy arguments, based on stubborn disregard of truth, 
stand forever against them as an indictment and a conviction. 



§ 88 — CALCUTTA AND THE RICE PLAGUE 

As if to contribute to the confusion of America's war efforts 
to solve the bread problem of her allies as well as her own, the 
Indian Medical Gazette, published in Calcutta, first quarter 191 7, 
in an editorial, "The War and Burmah Rice," declared that pol- 
ished rice, the counterpart of patent wheat flour and corn flour, 
is not fit to eat. 

"Dr. T. F. Pedley, health officer of Rangoon, points out that 
the craze for polished rice (deprived of its germ and mineral 
cells) is a pernicious mistake. The more highly polished the 
rice the less valuable it is as a human food," asserts the Indian 
authority. 

"Pedley shows that the brightly polished white rice sold in 
grocers' shops in England, is neither nutritious nor tasty, and that 
this accounts for the very poor opinion entertained by English 
people of the value of rice as a food. 

"Pedley advocates the pushing in the home markets of nat- 
ural whole Burmah rice, which is both tasty and nutritious. 

"The fancy trade names 'Patna,' 'Bassein,' 'Carolina,' have no 
geographical significance. They merely designate the whiter, 
more tasteless, more unnutritious and higher priced rice. 

"In Bengal bazaars much Rangoon rice is sold. It is gener- 
ally whiter than the home-grown Burmah rice made in the Denkhi, 
but still not the highly polished stuff sold at high prices in Eu- 
rope. 

"In Calcutta it is only too clear to judge by the pernicious 
smoke chimneys that rice mills are multiplying in the land, and 
are doubtless paying concerns, but the public should be taught 
that polished white rice is inferior in nutritive value to the 
rougher reddish or brownish rice, unpolished. 

"Whole brown rice is as superior to polished rice as was the 
old-fashioned oatmeal made by the local village miller, to the 
oat food with fancy names now sold in every shop. 



280 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

"This unnutritious polished white rice is the main cause of 
malnutrition among the rice eaters of the East." 

While America stood in bewilderment over her bread policy, 
from every quarter of the globe came these significant contri- 
butions to the literature of decay and death now being compiled 
by millers the world over. 

The governments of many nations at war filed away the truth, 
and the commercial interests, fattening on the anemia of the 
world, kept it filed away. 

Food commissioners, administrators, directors, bureau chiefs, 
secretaries and under-secretaries had no word to say on the sub- 
ject except that they were afraid to kill people by feeding them 
with food as it came from the hands of God. 

None of them seemed to believe that God might be trusted in 
His scheme of providing for the nourishment of the world. But 
of this they were sure; the boards of directors, the mill pro- 
prietors, the stock owning banks and the advertising agencies 
knew more about the laws of nutrition than the Creator who 
formulated them. Yet July 27th, 191 7, Senator Borah publicly re- 
ferred to God as if God really had existence, saying : "This is a 
time for prayer." 

It would be prayer indeed that would smite the creatures who, 
sending from their advertising agencies plates and matrices to 
every country newspaper in the United States, urge the people 
not to abandon their white flour diet. 

These corrupting lies are as contemptible as the lie which 
informed the world that whole wheat bread killed a thou- 
sand Belgians. 

A war of sacrifice should include in its plans the wiping out 
of special privileges at home. These evils may pay huge divi- 
dends to a few, but they perpetuate a cold, bloodless, conscience- 
less scheme of presumption which collects tribute from the help- 
less masses. 



§ 89 — A PARADOX 

As if to laugh at the facts, the February, 1918, number of the 
Forecast came out with a repetition of the statement of Herbert 



HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 281 

Hoover, discouraging the use of whole grain bread because he 
believed that "the whole grain bread fed by the Belgian Relief to 
the unhappy subjects of King Albert killed at least a thousand 
of them." 

This story, which refused to die, followed closely on the heels 
of a statement published by Professor Alonzo E. Taylor over a 
preface written by Herbert Hoover himself, urging the use of 
whole grain foods because they contain substances which when 
not present bring about serious conditions of malnutrition re- 
sulting in. death. 

This strange paradox disclosed a condition of official vague- 
ness in the Food Administration, where sharply outlined truth 
alone should have existed. 

"Much more mineral matter is contained in grain offal than 
in patent flour," says the Hoover-Taylor statement. "Individu- 
als who prefer bread made of patent Hour must therefore secure 
their mineral salts from fruits and vegetables, and this is entirely 
practicable. If, however, it is not possible to secure fruits and 
vegetables then the diet must contain Hour made of the whole 
grain in order to obtain the necessary mineral matter. 

"Cereals contain the water soluble vitamine in the outer layers, 
and it is therefore not present in patent Hour, but is present in 
whole wheat Hour!' 

The authorities at Washington knew according to the most 
reputable authorities that at the outbreak of the war 2 per cent, 
of the people of the United States owned 60 per cent, of the 
wealth ; 33 per cent, of the people — the middle class — owned 35 
per cent., and the remaining 65 per cent, of the people owned 
5 per cent, of the wealth. 

They knew that war activities had sharply accentuated this 
concentration of wealth and further reduced the holdings of the 
many whose war incomes, although inflated, did not keep pace 
with the rapidly advancing prices of foodstuffs. 

They knew that the immigration commission which reported 
in 1909 upon the incomes of nearly 16,000 families whose bread 
winners were engaged in industrial pursuits found the incomes 
of 64 per cent, of them below $750 a year, and the incomes of 
31 per cent, below $500 a year, the families averaging 5.6 mem- 
bers each. 



282 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Even then 8,000,000 women were industrially employed in 
America, two-thirds of them receiving less than $8 and nearly 
one-half receiving less than $6 a week. 

Two million of these women were described as "adrift" from 
home. They were entirely self-supporting. 

Five million, four hundred thousand women who lived at home 
contributed largely to the support of parents and other depend- 
ents by pouring their earnings into the family purse. 

A hundred authorities had told us in the most emphatic terms 
of the necessity of putting into the bodies of these people the 
important substances withdrawn from so much of their food. 

Professor Taylor himself says that 55 per cent, of their food 
consists of bread, and by that he means denatured bread. 

As if to accentuate these truths as a preparation for Amer- 
ica's entry into the war, the Association of American Physicians 
met at Washington, May, 1916, with Dr. Henry Sewell of Den- 
ver in the chair. 

At that convention, the 31st, Dr. E. J. Wood of Wilmington, 
N. C, presented long neglected evidence to show the deadliness 
of the deficiency diseases which he declared have been far more 
specific than is thought. 

The theory that the people were getting their offsetting min- 
erals and vitamines from fruits and vegetables had long been 
battered down, but as a theory it still persisted in high places, as 
in the Food Administration. 

Dr. Wood declared: "Refined corn meal, polished rice and 
patent flour are deadly foods. We have proved this by experi- 
ments in which we provoked outbreaks of disease by feeding 
highly milled meal to our victims, and in every instance promptly 
correcting the disease by feeding whole meal." 

Dr. Alfred S. Hess at the same convention declared: 
"Whereas Dr. Wood has found the germ of corn, always bolted 
out in making refined corn meal, to be a sure cure for deficiency 
diseases, I have found the wheat germ always bolted out in 
making white flour, a sure cure for malnutrition in infants." 

Yes, confusion rests upon the multitudes. Their scientific 
leaders, who have no political, state or federal authority, seek 
to lead them out of their perils. Their scientific leaders who do 
possess authority are strangely content to let them rest where 
they are. 



SEVEN: WHY FAMINE FOLLOWS THE 
USE OF ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 



SEVEN: WHY FAMINE FOLLOWS THE USE OF 
ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 

§ 90 OLD BROWN SUGAR 

Old men and women consume little or no sugar. Babies that 
live consume very little. Sugar-eating infants do not survive. 
Men who drink alcoholic beverages rarely eat sugar. The vic- 
tims of diabetes avoid sugar. 

Thus a large element of our population consumes sugar spar- 
ingly or not at all. In spite of this the Department of Com- 
merce shows the average consumption of cane sugar in the 
United States for the year ending June 30, 1917, was eighty-one 
pounds for every man, woman and child. 

These figures covered cane sugar only. Another sugar de- 
bauch in the form of glucose candies, corn syrup and table syrup 
made of glucose and refiners' syrup was not included. 

Combining the various forms of refined sugar and eliminat- 
ing infants, the aged, whiskey drinkers and invalids, the aver- 
age annual consumption of refined sugars in the United States is 
at least one hundred and fifty pounds per person. 

The figures of the Department of Commerce show that in 
Germany the consumption is sixteen pounds, in France twenty- 
eight pounds and in Great Britain thirty pounds. America has 
become a nation of refined sugar hogs. 

What are the facts concerning the effects of excess sugars in 
the diet, and what does such excess mean, in terms of degenera- 
tion, to the future of this country? 

Sugar, as now manufactured, yields only heat to the body. 
Sugar is "purified" fuel burned in the tissues without contribut- 
ing any of the salts, vitamines, biochemic reactions, building or 
repair material indispensable to health. 

The end products of its combustion are acids. When it is con- 
sidered that the American people already consume in their re- 
fined breadstuff's, breakfast foods and meats, enormous quanti- 

285 



286 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

ties of acid-producing foods, the sugar bombardment becomes 
threatening in the extreme. 

I use the word "bombardment" because it expresses the facts 
exactly. In our excessive consumption of refined foods we are 
bombarding the entire nation's defence against disease; and re- 
fined sugar, heaviest of the artillery, is rapidly breaking down our 
resistance against these great enemies of the human family, 
anemia, tuberculosis, pneumonia, heart disease and diabetes. 

In the days when we were eating unrefined grain products 
and unrefined sugars we ate more vegetables, fruits and greens, 
from all of which are obtained the basic or alkaline substances 
needed by the internal secretions. These alkaline substances keep 
the blood and other body fluids in the state of normal alkalinity 
essential to health. 

Then appeared our first grave dietetic error almost simul- 
taneously with the introduction of highly milled grains, the ab- 
normal starch content of which must be converted in the body 
into sugar before it can be utilised. The body makes its own 
sugar, all it can use, from non-sugar foods and even though de- 
prived of every form of commercial sugar, man, woman or child 
can and does obtain all the fruit, vegetable, and cereal sugars 
necessary to health and life. 

Sugar became popular because, as our mothers and grand- 
mothers knew it, there was good reason for using it in gen- 
erous quantities. Not only was it far more flavourful but in- 
comparably more nutritious than the refined products of mod- 
ern times, upon which we are gorging ourselves at the expense 
of teeth, blood, bone and tissue. 

Twenty-five years ago old-fashioned brown sugar, manufac- 
tured on the sugar cane plantation, was in common use. Such 
sugar possessed not only all the sweetness of the cane but also 
its aromatic and nutritive substances including the mineral salts 
no longer present. 

Maple sugar can be refined until it, too, is as white and flavour- 
less as granulated cane sugar, beet sugar, glucose or corn syrup. 

The delicious flavour of maple sugar is due to the presence 
of "impurities" derived from the sap of the maple tree. The 
delicious flavour of old-fashioned brown sugar is due to the 
presence of "impurities" derived from the juice of the canfi. 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 287 

The elimination of these impurities yields a colourless, but sweet 
product. , 

To-day we do not know whether our refined sugar is derived 
from the honey reed, now known as the sugar cane, or from a 
beet root. All we know is that it is sweet. Whence it comes, 
what curious processes it passes through on the way, how it af- 
fects the body when it arrives, are questions never asked. 

In the old days when Louisiana was producing old-fashioned 
brown sugar and when a clean, wholesome, old-fashioned brown 
sugar was manufactured in the West Indies, the refiners, grasp- 
ing at ways and means of earning greater profits, conceived the 
idea that if they could prejudice the public against brown sugar 
nobody would buy it. 

So they started to drive out of the American market all the 
old-fashioned brown sugar then made on the cane plantations. 

My work has made me unhappily familiar with many food 
crimes which, by their very nature, cannot be punished. This 
crime was literally a conspiracy against the human race, and its 
consequences are now to be reckoned with although no body 
of laws exists with which to meet them. 

The refiners knew if they could prejudice the people against 
the use of brown sugar, thus destroying the market for it, they 
could then buy it up, refine it, and control its distribution, thus 
securing a profit on every pound of the raw material that every 
planter produced. 

In the old days the manufacturer of brown sugar shipped 
his product direct to market. The refiners did not touch it on 
the way. Of course they were unable to collect tribute from 
such a system. 

To get control so that all the producers would have to send their 
raw sugar through the refiners' hands it was necessary to kill 
off the demand for brown sugar. To kill off the demand it was 
necessary to disgust the people with all brown sugar so that their 
appetite for it might be destroyed. 

To accomplish this they inaugurated one of the most violent 
advertising campaigns ever witnessed in America. In 1898 they 
were ready to "educate" the public and educate it they did. 



288 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 91 — NEW WHITE SUGAR 

The advertisements of the brown sugar exterminators con- 
sisted obviously of an attack upon old-fashioned brown sugar. 
Each advertisement was accompanied by a picture said to be 
an enlarged photograph of a dreadful looking animal described 
as a cross between a louse and a lizard. 

To prove such a creature lived in all brown sugar they went to 
Dublin and dug up a commercial chemist who, like many other 
commercial chemists now earning fat fees by furnishing "sci- 
entific" support for many food indecencies, was willing to cer- 
tify, for a consideration, that he had found this louse-lizard- 
monster in brown sugar. 

One of the advertisements, which I quote word for word from 
the Congressional Record, read as follows: 

"Professor Cameron, public analyst of the City of Dublin, who 
has examined samples of raw sugar, states that they contain 
great numbers of disgusting insects which produce a disgusting 
disease." 

The advertisers did not say what disease. It was enough for 
their purpose to say it was a disgusting disease. They knew 
they were lying but the American public, long fed on advertising 
lies, swallowed the statement and asked no questions. 

"The shape of these disgusting insects," the advertisement 
continued, "is very accurately shown in the accompanying photo- 
graphs magnified two hundred diameters. It is a formidably 
organised, exceedingly lively and decidedly ugly little animal. 
From its oval-shaped body stretches forth a proboscis terminat- 
ing in a kind of scissors with which it seizes upon its food. Its 
organs of locomotion consist of eight legs, each jointed and 
finished at its extremity with a hook. 

"The number of these creatures found in raw sugar is some- 
times exceedingly great and in no instance is raw sugar quite free 
from either the insects or ■ their eggs. Brown sugar should 
never be used." 

Now comes the devil from behind the stump, and here is 
what the devil said through the medium of this advertisement. 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 289 

"It is fortunate, however, to note that these terrible creatures 
do not occur in refined sugar of any quality. Use only refined 
sugar." 

Our mothers and grandmothers were horrified. Wherever 
they looked they found a picture of the disgusting louse-lizard- 
monster. They saw the dreadful creature in all their delicious 
desserts and dainties. Their fruit cakes, muffins, cookies, brown 
bread, taffies, candies, hard sauces and other good things sud- 
denly appeared before them as horrible sepulchres in which re- 
posed the dead bodies of vermin. 

One after another the advertisements appeared. The Dublin 
professor became famous and the American public writhed in 
disgust. 

The brown sugar industry, as far as the housewife was con- 
cerned, was completely destroyed. 

Wholesale bakers' supply houses, unknown to the housewife, 
continued to handle the stuff in carload lots and the retail bak- 
ers fed it, without arousing their suspicion, to the poor crea- 
tures who wouldn't dream of using it in any home-made prod- 
uct. 

The poor plantation owner who made brown sugar just as 
maple sugar is made to-day, found his market closed to him. 
His only means of disposing of his raw sugar was to sell it to 
the refiner. This is what the refiner wanted and this is what 
he got. 

Just as the farmer used to send his grain to the local grist 
mill but was gradually forced to ship it to the centralised roller 
mills, thereby losing control of his product and furnishing enor- 
mous profits to a few highly organised groups of money makers, 
so also the planter found it necessary to do business with a 
few monopolists or quit. 

Through the louse-lizard-monster the American people have 
been deprived of a luxury which there seems to be no hope of 
restoring to them unless, grimly determined to act for them- 
selves, they decide to discourage the use of refined sugars of 
every kind and thus make it necessary for the sugar interests to 
give them back the old-fashioned product so ruthlessly de- 
stroyed. 

In the meantime they must remember that the quantity of 



290 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

sugar which the human body can utilise is limited, although 
they are constantly encouraged to eat more sugar and still more 
sugar on the ground that it provides the body with heat. 

Foods are neither heating nor cooling. No food has the 
power of raising the temperature of the body to a point higher 
than trie normal constant, 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit. No foods 
are cooling in the sense that they can reduce the temperature 
of the body to a point lower than this same normal constant. 

Sugars become heat producers only when the body's ma- 
chinery of heat control breaks down. The result of such break- 
down is fever. In fever the body literally burns up. Not only 
are the sugars of the body burned but its very tissues are burned. 

The warmth so necessary to life is produced by a slow form 
of oxidation supported by the foods we eat. 

In breathing we take large quantities of oxygen from the 
air through our lungs, provided the hemoglobin, or iron contain- 
ing substance of the blood, is present in normal amount. 

Hemoglobin carries oxygen to the tissues where it is needed 
and carries the waste product, carbon dioxide, away. The slow 
evolution of heat which accompanies this process is described 
as the body temperature. 

In disease the oxidation or burning process frequently pro- 
ceeds faster than in health. So delicately adjusted is this burn- 
ing process that a slight variation of four or five degrees either 
way is often sufficient to cause death. 

It has been conclusively established that the circulating blood 
cannot carry for the needs of this burning process any sugar 
in excess of one-tenth of one per cent, of the total volume of 
blood. To get more than this limited quantity of sugar into 
the blood circulation vital organs must first break down. 

We simply cannot utilise more sugar than this fixed limit per- 
mits, for which reason the excess sugar now consumed consti- 
tutes one of our biggest waste problems. 

Yet, always are we urged to consume more sugar not, as is 
quite apparent, for the good of our health but for the benefit of 
the sugar industry. 

There is an organ in the body called the pancreas which in 
health sets up a barrier against the entrance into the blood of 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 291 

_. ■ — — ■ — — 

larger quantities of sugar than the one-tenth of one per cent. 
which the blood can take care of. 

Cramming ourselves with sugar in quantities never before con- 
sumed by any nation in the history of the world, we are lit- 
erally overloading the pancreas, and the liver, kidneys, lungs, 
skin and other glands are whipped into action to dispose of the 
excess fuel. 

How long it takes for these glands, taxed beyond their strength, 
to completely break down we do not know. But we do know 
that sugar gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins because it is 
a slow form of suicide. 

Scientists have proved that in diseased conditions of the pan- 
creas, although they do not know how such diseased conditions 
are established, all excess or waste sugar is eliminated through 
the kidneys. 

How long the kidneys can stand up under such overloading 
is not known. But it is known that in America kidney disease 
in one form or another is constantly on the increase. 

In this respect it is interesting to know that the refined and 
concentrated sugars do not conduct themselves in the body as 
other sugars, such, for instance, as honey. In another chapter 
I shall attempt to show the really wonderful difference between 
these forms of sugar. 

For the present it is enough to reiterate that we are laying a 
sugar curse upon the heads of prospective mothers, nursing 
mothers, infants still unborn, growing children, bread-winners 
and workers. To lift this curse we must exercise control over 
our refined sugar appetites, cutting down our consumption until 
the one hundred and fifty pounds per person per year is reduced 
to thirty pounds or less. 

Happy was the day that America learned she really could pass 
safely through a sugarless siege. 



§ 92 SUGARITIS 

While all America during 191 7 and 1918 was clamoring for 
sugar and a Senate Committee was busily engaged in probing 



292 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

into the conditions responsible for the sugar famine, the De- 
partment of Health of New York City was preparing a bulletin 
on the spread of diabetes, a disease in which there is such seri- 
ous disturbance of nutrition that the body partially or completely 
loses its ability to make use of sugar in any quantity, however 
small. 

This disease makes it impossible to utilise starch as well as 
sugar, for which reason foods that are turned into sugar in the 
body, such as potatoes, macaroni, white bread, farina, rice and 
corn-meal, provide no nutrition and are wasted when consumed. 

From the facts set forth the public health officials concluded 
that diabetes has been coming more and more into prominence 
in recent years and that during the past ten years the disease has 
taken its place as a very significant factor in the nation's mor- 
tality rate. 

Joslin, whose work on the disturbance of sugar nutrition is 
now accepted as an authority in the United States, declares that 
we have here not far from 500,000 individuals who either have 
diabetes now or are destined to have diabetes before they die. 

Commenting on this startling fact the Department of Health 
of New York City asserts, "That this is based on something 
more than guess-work is clear from the careful statistical analy- 
sis presented by the author." 

The outstanding feature of the alarming situation revealed by 
Joslin is the fact that these diseases are to a considerable extent 
offsetting the good effects, such as prolongation of life, which 
should follow the development of sanitary science in recent 
years. 

We no longer let our garbage decompose in the public streets. 
We no longer permit the bodies of dead animals to rot in our 
back yards. In many communities the cesspool has been abol- 
ished; water purification plants have been established; the 
drinking water is treated with alum and then chlorinated so as 
to prevent the spread of typhoid. We have established quaran- 
tine restrictions, meat inspection, milk inspection, food inspec- 
tion and are spending millions of dollars annually in semi-po- 
litical efforts to safeguard the purity and wholesomeness of our 
food, our air and our water. 

But, while we are lengthening life by modern sanitation and 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 293 

by saving infants under five years of age who, on account of 
their low vitality and general weakness, used to die, we are 
killing off men and women in the early forties with diabetes 
and obesity. 

Yet — it is now clear that in the development of these diseases 
our abnormal consumption of refined sugars and refined cereals 
is responsible. 

Sugar in the forms in which Nature prepares it is an indis- 
pensable element of diet. 

Because it is soluble it is easily carried by the blood to the 
muscle that needs it. 

But, as we consume it to-day, sugar is not a natural, but an 
artificial product. 

With the exception of honey there is no concentrated sugar 
in Nature. Very dilute sugar exists in ripe fruits and vege- 
tables, principally in their juices. 

Man has learned the trick of taking this dilute sugar and con- 
centrating it, although Nature teaches him that he should obtain 
the sugar he needs almost entirely from his ordinary fruit, vege- 
table and cereal foods, just as his ancestors did for thousands 
of years before him and as animals have done since the begin- 
ning of time. 

Nature provides man with a ferment found in saliva. This 
ferment converts the starch of potatoes, wheat, corn, rice, oats, 
beets, carrots and all other starch-containing seeds and roots into 
sugar. 

By converting corn-starch through chemical treatment into 
glucose and by refining cane juice and beet juice, man serves 
notice upon his salivary glands that he has no use for them and 
shuns the assistance which Nature asks them to render. 

So, to-day, we consume millions of tons of concentrated candy, 
confections, syrups and sweets of all kinds. The inevitable re- 
sult is a gradual breaking down of the body's ability to make use 
not only of concentrated sugar but of any kind of sugar and 
under the terrific strain the organs of control are finally smashed 
and in susceptible individuals diseases, born of sugar and starch 
abuses, are permitted to break through and invade the body. 

It is not astonishing that we now have a half million people in 
this country condemned to premature death by sugar. 



294 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

It is not astonishing that since the abnormal increase in the 
consumption of sugar the last generation has recorded a fifty 
per cent, increase in diabetic affections. 

Refined sugar and refined starch have been U-boating the stam- 
ina of America. 

For a long time they did their work without leaving a trace. 
Scientists scratched their heads and puzzled over the facts which 
they did not understand. But, to-day, the nature of sugar and 
the diseases that flow from its excessive consumption are bet- 
ter understood. 

There is good reason to believe that honey does not conduct 
itself in the body like refined cane sugar or beet sugar and it is 
probable that maple sugar differs in like manner. 

Davidoff observed that honey was tolerated by the diabetic to 
whom sugar in any other form was poison. Davidoff made 
this discovery by the merest accident. Yet he so marvelled over 
it that he reported his findings to the medical fraternity. 

A single instance does not, of course, establish a law. But 
Davidoff's single instance can be put to the test in a million in- 
stances and the results of such tests will establish a law. I 
have had under my observation a diabetic who suffers the keen- 
est distress if he consumes a single cube of granulated sugar or 
eats a single slice of white bread. Strangely enough he can 
consume honey in moderation and whole wheat bread without 
experiencing any distress. 

Nearly two years have passed since I called to his attention 
the phenomenon noted by Davidoff. Hesitatingly and with 
great reluctance he took his first teaspoonful of honey expecting 
to pay the price for his indulgence. He was amazed to find no 
reaction. A few days later he repeated the dose and again 
seemed to enjoy immunity. He tried a teaspoonful of honey 
every day for a week, at the end of which time he became a 
little bolder and gradually increased his daily dose of honey until 
now he is adding to his diet four big teaspoonfuls every day. 

His experience, I believe, while significant only as the ex- 
perience of a single individual, is so curiously in harmony with 
the experience of Davidoff that it should serve as an inspira- 
tion for further study along this line. 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 295 



§ 93 — THE HONEY BEE 

The curious indifference of the American people towards 
honey has cost this country more in dollars, cents, public health 
and common comfort than can ever be accurately estimated. 

The manufacture of refined sugar in no wise assists in the 
development of the nation's most important agricultural indus- 
tries although bee-keeping in the production of honey results in 
untold riches through pollination of the food farms of the coun- 
try. 

Neglect of the bee, through over-emphasis of the importance 
of the cane, beet sugar and glucose industries, has not only re- 
sulted in the withdrawal from the human family of a sugar food 
and sweetener of infinitely greater value than refined sugar but 
it has brought failure to many a fruit district that would other- 
wise flourish beyond the fondest dreams of the fruit farmer. 

For thousands of years the confections of the world depended 
upon honey for their very existence. Jacob sent honey as an of- 
fering to Joseph, the ruler of Egypt, at least three thousand 
years before the first sugar refinery was built. 

That honey and the honey bee should have been lost sight of 
in the advance of civilisation constitutes one of the many curious 
blunders which humanity, while priding itself on its progress, 
is so prone to commit. 

The bee is destined to benefit generations still unborn but be- 
fore it can render its greatest service to humanity, humanity 
must learn to consume honey. 

It is not generally known that in the United States we con- 
sume only 40,000,000 pounds of comb honey and 120,000,000 
pounds of extracted honey annually. All this honey is gath- 
ered by the bee in the form of nectar from the blossoms of 
white clover, sage, sweet clover, alfalfa, willow herb, raspberry, 
cotton, golden rod, aster, heartsease, apple, orange, basswood 
and buckwheat. 

The greatest living authority on honey and the man who has 
done more to revive the neglected bee-keeping industry of the 
United States than all others combined, A. I. Root, insinuates 



296 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

that the 160,000,000 pounds of honey gathered by the bees of 
the United States every year represent but one per cent, of the 
total quantity which the hills, valleys, and fields of America either, 
can produce or have been producing since the beginning of the 
world. 

Ninety-nine per cent, of the annual crop, or a total of 15,- 
840,000,000 pounds, is wasted every year. The enormity of 
this waste is almost too vast to be grasped by the human mind. 

In gathering this volume of honey, which we could gather 
if we wanted to, every orchard in the land would be pollinated. 
What this pollination would mean in the production of food is 
almost incredible. 

The Van Rensselaer apple orchard in Medina County, Ohio, 
tells the whole story which the farmers of America might well 
heed to their advantage. The Van Rensselaer farm produced 
on the average five hundred bushels of apples annually until 
its owner trimmed and sprayed his trees and began to keep bees, 
whereupon the production of the same orchard, with not a single 
new tree, leaped from five hundred bushels to sixteen thousand 
bushels in a single season. 

Yet not so long ago bees were looked upon by the farmers 
of the United States as nuisances and many lawsuits have been 
bitterly prosecuted in order to destroy the so-called pests. 

The farmer did not appreciate what a colony of bees meant 
to the fruitfulness of his land. But, to-day, the tragedy of bee- 
killing in many sections of the country is looked upon as a 
heinous and deplorable crime against Nature. 

On the Repp Farm in Gloucester County, New Jersey, we 
have another experience of the bee's benevolence toward man 
in the production of food. 

This farm is now producing 120,000 bushels of apples. Repp 
himself declares that so indispensable are bees to the growing 
of fruit in this country that fruit growers can afford to pay local 
bee men at the rate of five dollars a colony merely to have the 
bees in the orchards during the time the trees are in bloom, let- 
ting the owners of the bees take them away again at once. 

Neither Van Rensselaer nor Repp are pioneers in the matter 
of pollinating fruit bloom through the instrumentality of the bee. 
They did know, however, that the old conflict between bee keep- 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 297 

ers and fruit growers in which the fruit growers swore that the 
bees injured the bloom, punctured the fruit and interfered with 
the packing, was unfounded. 

They knew that the fruit growers did not understand that 
they were driving away the very agency necessary for the proper 
pollination of the fruit bloom when they were fighting the honey 
bee as a pest. 

In Massachusetts a bee keeper was obliged to remove bees from 
a whole district on the complaint of fruit growers that they were 
a nuisance. Two years later the fruit growers were glad to 
have the bees come back. Two seasons of fruitless orchards 
had taught them a lesson never to be forgotten. 

Dr. Philips, of the Bureau of Entomology, Washington, ac- 
tually declares that fruit orchards cannot be planted properly on 
an extensive scale without maintaining in connection with them 
numerous colonies of honey bees and he goes so far as to as- 
sert that bee-keeping adds indirectly more to the resources of 
the country by flower pollination than by the sale of honey and 
wax. 

The orange growers of Florida now know, what the bee means 
to their crops. Sweet cherry orchards have jumped from a 
production of thirteen tons to thirty-nine tons merely through 
the introduction of a few colonies of bees to the acre. Even 
the tomato is pollinated by the bee. 

In Massachusetts alone there are now over two thousand colo- 
nies of bees pollinating cucumbers, squashes, melons and pump- 
kins. The grape, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, cranberry, 
blueberry, gooseberry, currant, plum and pear need the bee. 

In New Zealand it was found that red clover could not be cul-i 
tivated until honey bees were imported from England. 

Greater demand for honey as a sugar food means more bees. 
More bees mean more food of every kind. Love of honey is 
therefore one of the most productive of the forces now engaged 
in the growing and harvesting of crops ; in the reconstruction of 
the world itself. 

We shall certainly never have more bees until we find a mar- 
ket for more honey. Once the people begin to demand honey 
instead of the substitutes that are offered for honey they will 



298 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

set up a system in America from which will flow blessings be- 
yond price. 

That God made the bee for a purpose is potent to all but as- 
tigmatic souls. 

§ 94 — HONEY 

Honey cannot be adulterated. There is no need to go into 
the details that justify this sweeping statement. All the efforts 
of food sophisticators to imitate honey have failed. 

These facts were settled for all time in a Federal District 
Court, Philadelphia, November 20th to 25th, 191 3. The bee itself 
was the chief witness against the honey fraud prosecuted by 
the government and the records of the trial are indeed consoling 
in that they have demonstrated that with all man's skill and all 
the tricks of his laboratories he cannot successfully imitate God. 

Space does not permit description here of how the ordinary 
female bee on a diet of special food is developed into a true 
queen bee with a perfect body and perfect organs suggesting 
what can be done for the average child if properly nourished 
before its birth and properly fed thereafter. 

For the present our purposes are served if we learn and apply 
one fact in connection with our purchase of honey. 

The modern bee keeper extracts honey from the comb in a 
rapidly whirling machine. Extracted honey is cheaper than 
comb honey for the reason that the empty combs can be used 
over and over again. 

It takes from five to ten pounds of honey to make a pound of 
wax and when the bees are constantly required to rebuild their 
cells they lose just that much energy which ordinarily would be 
spent in gathering honey. Hence in making it unnecessary for 
the bees to construct new combs they are given more time to 
gather honey. 

For years in America the average market price for extracted 
honey has been little more than half the price of comb honey. 
Most people know nothing of the difference between extracted 
honey and comb honey. They foolishly think all honey should 
be liquid as it is usually found in the glass jars on sale in the 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 299 



stores. They also foolishly think that unless honey is in this 
liquid state it is not pure honey. 

This is superstition. All honey will granulate and become solid 
unless heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit and held at that tem- 
perature for a half hour or more. 

Honey is heated in this way in order to keep it liquid and 
thus meet the ignorant objections of the uninitiated consumer. 

But in heating the honey to make it satisfy artificial taste 
standards its finest flavours and most distinguished character- 
istics are lost, being driven off in the heating process. 

The honey is still honey and still wholesome honey and still 
delicious honey but the fine aromatic bouquet has been sacri- 
ficed to a silly prejudice born in ignorance. 

Another superstition of costly nature expresses itself in dis- 
crimination against the light colored honey in favor of the 
darker honey or against the darker honey in favor of the 
lighter. 

The natural color of alfalfa honey, white clover honey, 
orange honey, basswood honey and sage honey is very light, al- 
most water-white, with a little touch of amber. The red clover 
and buckwheat honeys are much darker and people who are 
used to these darker honeys refuse to accept the lighter honeys 
on the assumption that they are impure. 

To overcome these erroneous ideas the honey producer is fre- 
quently forced to blend honey of all types and colours so as to 
get a certain uniformity. This blending in no wise affects the 
nutritive quality of the honey nor, let me repeat, does the heat- 
ing affect its wholesomeness. But blending and heating make 
it quite impossible for honey lovers to gratify their taste for 
this or that particular kind of honey or to know anything of the 
true nature of honey. 

To a similar extent the use of pure maple sugar parallels the 
results attained by the use of honey. But maple sugar is now 
difficult to obtain. Even at the time when the sugar famine 
was at its height a single manufacturer of cigarettes was pur- 
chasing more than half the annual production of maple sugar 
in the United States and Canada. 

The last purchase of pure maple sugar made by this tobacco 



300 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

concern consisted of forty carloads of 35,000 pounds each, a 
total of 1,400,000 pounds. The price paid was less than twelve 
cents a pound. Every ounce of this maple sugar went up in 
smoke and not an atom of it will contribute to the nourishment 
of the human body. 

Well indeed will it be for us as a nation when we reduce our 
consumption of cane sugar and give more attention to the uses 
of honey and maple sugar. 

Honey drop cakes, honey fondant, maple fritters, honey gin- 
ger cookies, honey or maple ice cream, honey butter, honey jelly, 
honey mousse, maple meringues, honey caramels, maple creams, 
honey and maple taffy are indescribably superior to the same 
sweets made of granulated sugar. 

Honey cookies, marmalade, apple puddings, brown Betty, fruit 
bread, coffee cake, corn bread, griddle cakes, short cake, pump- 
kin pie, doughnuts, drop cakes, fruit muffins, cinnamon bread, 
graham biscuits, tarts, layer cake, are all improved by the sub- 
stitution of honey for sugar. 

The American people have given little attention to the use of 
honey in cookery, for which reason they are almost totally ig- 
norant of the teasing and seducing flavour which honey imparts 
to the hundred and one delicious and nutritious foodstuffs to 
the excellence of which it so readily contributes. 

For a hundred reasons, all of them compelling, let us eat more 
honey, but less sugar. 



§ 95 — GLUCOSE 

Glucose as a filler is the symbol of denatured carbohydrate 
foods, the excess of which in the diet of the average American 
family is the cause of many diseases, beginning in constipation 
and ending in anemia, tuberculosis, acidosis, and the disorders 
incident to lowered resistance. 

Thursday, August 26th, 191 5, a prominent official of one of the 
large glucose manufacturing companies admitted to me that a 
restricted diet of denatured foods, whether glucose appears 
among them or not, will develop many disorders in the body. 

"Because we recognise these facts," he said, "we are now 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 301 

striving to give to the human animal the indispensable organic 
and inorganic mineral salts and colloids of the 'steep-water' of 
our corn syrup factory. Our corn solids are the richest part 
of the corn and we have tons of it to dispose of every day. 

"We can actually get a better price for these substances as 
fertiliser than we are now obtaining for them as cattle food," 
he said, "but we so recognise their importance as food that we 
have resisted the temptation to dispose of them as fertiliser 
when they are so necessary to the animals that feed upon them." 

According to his estimate, 80 per cent, of the glucose manu- 
factured from corn is disposed of to bakers, confectioners, jam 
and jelly manufacturers and makers of other commercial foods 
and beverages. 

In all these types of ready-made food the salts of the sugar 
cane are not restored through the glucose employed in their man- 
ufacture, and practically the only mineral salts in the pie, cake, 
pudding or candy (manufactured with glucose or granulated 
sugar) are the salts introduced in the form of alum and other 
baking powders and preservatives. These are not the salts, in 
form or nature, required by the nutritional processes of the body. 

Probably the most serious aspect of these demineralised carbo- 
hydrate foods is the vast accumulation of evidence supporting 
the belief that the excessive ingestion of refined sugars and 
starches, so common in the diet of the American people, is a 
factor in the cause of diabetes which may account for the rapid 
increase of this disease. 

Theodore C. Janeway, Bard professor of the practice of medi- 
cine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia Uni- 
versity, declares: 

"In diabetes the tissues are in a state of partial or complete 
sugar starvation though they may be bathed in lymph rich in 
glucose. The glucose, circulating in the blood and not utilised 
by the muscles and cells for food, accumulates until in excess 
of the normal upper limit of one part in one thousand. 

"This excess of glucose in the blood is called hyperglycemia. 
With long standing hyperglycemia the kidneys lose their power 
to throw off the excess glucose and the degree of hyperglycemia 
tends to rise progressively. It is because the appetite is fre- 
quently gratified by carbohydrate foods (sugars and starches) 



302 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

that hyperglycemia is increased with no gain to the body in 
energy. 

"Inasmuch as the diabetic has lost his toleration for sugars 
and starches he must be safeguarded from all influences known 
to diminish his tolerance. Among such influences, clinical ex- 
perience teaches us plainly that hyperglycemia plays one of the 
chief roles. 

"Failure to institute proper dietetic treatment or self-indul- 
gence on the part of the patient so frequently leads to the de- 
velopment of severe diabetes in a previously mild case that it 
is obvious that over-taxing the weakened power for using sugars 
and starches is diminished by indulgence in sugars and starches. ,, 

The evidence that it is this indulgence which sets up the 
morbid condition, eventually expressing itself as diabetes, is 
weighty and significant. 



§ 96 — GLUCOSITIS 

"In younger diabetic patients," declares Janeway, "it is not 
safe to allow an amount of sugars and starches more than two- 
thirds of that tolerated, and they must be kept under close su- 
pervision because they are more likely to progress from a mild to 
a severe form of the disease, even under treatment, for the 
reason that they are apt to be careless and self-indulgent. ,, 

"The younger the patient the more marked are the evidences 
of excesses in carbohydrates," declare Friedenwold and Ruhrah, 
"yet we continue to encourage our children to daily indulgence 
in penny sweets (refined sugar and glucose), notwithstanding 
the abnormal proportion of refined carbohydrates which consti- 
tute the bulk of their breakfast, dinner, and supper." 

If excessive indulgence in sugars and starches diminishes tol- 
erance and causes a mild case of diabetes to progress to a severe 
form of the disease, is it not this very excess which sets up dia- 
betes in the first place by eventually destroying all tolerance for 
such denatured foods? 

Olaf Hammarsten, emeritus professor of medical and physi- 
ological chemistry in the University of Upsala, is very positive 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 303 

i, ,i, - M ■■■■ i — 

on this point. "A hyperglycemia may be caused by the intro- 
duction of more sugar than the body can destroy. If too much 
sugar is introduced into the intestinal tract at any one time, so 
that the assimilation limit is over-reached, the glycemia is caused 
by the passage of more sugar into the blood than the liver and 
other organs can destroy." 

Over-taxing any organ systematically is certain to be followed 
by a morbid condition in the functioning of that organ. 

In the morbid condition described as diabetes the factor of 
most significance is always the carbohydrate factor. All the evi- 
dence warrants the assumption that this carbohydrate factor is 
not alone a symptom of the disease, but its actual cause. 

Robert Hutchinson, physician to the London Hospital, de- 
clares : "It must be borne in mind that the assimilation limit is 
not the same for all individuals. Some people are able to con- 
vert more sugar into glycogen than others. Persons with a low 
assimilation limit are potential diabetics — that is to say, they 
are more liable, through sugar excesses, than others to become 
the victims of diabetes." 

Here is a direct connecting link between sugars and diabetes. 
There is evidence to indicate that artificial sweets, such as white 
sugar and glucose, conduct themselves in the body in a manner 
not now understood by scientists, but with much less tolerance 
than is enjoyed by natural sugars, accompanied by the other 
food elements with which nature endows them in the raw or un- 
refined state. 

Dr. Alonzo E. Taylor declares that all sugars are not toler- 
ated in the same way in the body. "Levulose and lactose are 
sometimes tolerated and utilised better by the diabetic than is 
glucose," he says. 

He is not clear as to the meaning of this. He simply cites it 
as a fact. He calls attention to the phenomenon that all the 
starches yield only glucose, not fructose or galactose, and there 
are variations in the toleration of starches of different deriva- 
tions. 

"The starch of the potato," he declares, "is supposed to burn 
better than that of corn. There is no doubt of one fact. Dia- 
betics tolerate oatmeal better than any other carbohydrate. It is 
common to feed a diabetic with little glycosuria and low acidosis 



304 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

ioo grams of starch per day in the form of oatmeal (accompa- 
nied by its natural mineral salts), when 50 grams of glucose 
(hydrolised corn-starch) will pass almost quantitatively into 
the urine. 

"For this fact, striking as it is, we have no explanation," he 
says. 

Referring to the same phenomenon, Julius Friedenwold, pro- 
fessor of gastroenterology in the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons, Baltimore, and John Ruhrah, professor of diseases of 
children in the same institution, declare: 

"The different varieties of sugars and starches ingested may 
vary in their glycosuria-producing power. Glucose causes the 
greatest percentage of sugar to appear in the urine in the short- 
est time. Fruit sugar augments the glycosuria only to one-half 
the extent when given in the same amount.'' 

Who will say that this lessened tolerance for glucose is with- 
out significance? Yet we commonly read in the magazines ad- 
vice to mothers written in positive and conclusive terms : "Give 
your children plenty of sugar, candy and sweets. It is good 
for them." 

Occasionally a pioneer strikes out in the direction of the truth, 
only to be startled by his discovery that all natural foods con- 
duct themselves in the body in a manner entirely dissimilar to the 
conduct of unnatural, artificial or prepared foods. 

Honey is not glucose. Glucose is not sap maple syrup or 
maple sugar. Glucose is not sorghum or open kettle cane syrup 
or old-fashioned molasses, now a thing of the past. 



§ 97 — WHY THE EXCESS? 

We know that in health the circulation can utilise only a cer- 
tain fixed quantity of glucose — 0.1 per cent, (one part in a thou- 
sand parts of blood) — beyond which quantity the healthy or nor- 
mal pancreas, one of the vital organs of the body, according to 
the investigations of Zulzer, Pfluger, Cohnheim, Minkowski, Nor- 
ten, Dominicis, Kleiner and Meltzer, seems to set up an im- 
penetrable barrier. 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 305 

Well indeed may the scientist who is looking for strange rea- 
sons to explain the origin of diabetes be asked these questions: 
How, even in health, can the human body profit by the con- 
sumption of enormous non-utilisable quantities of starch, glucose 
or sugar? 

How long can the body tolerate this overload or excess? 

In diseased conditions of the controlling organ the excess or 
waste glucose is eliminated through the kidneys, yet all Amer- 
ica is encouraged to use refined sugars, starches and glucose in 
enormous quantities, notwithstanding the fact that in order to 
pass into the circulation at all, beyond the fixed limit of o.i 
per cent., a vital organ, the pancreas, must first break down and 
become diseased, permitting, in other words, diabetes to develop. 

It is well known that the body in health manufactures in a 
natural manner from the starches, gums, sugars and fats of vege- 
tables, grains and fruits all the glucose it requires for its normal 
needs and all the glucose it can utilise. 

As long as the body remains in health the circulation pos- 
sesses the ability and readiness to rid itself of a surplus of glu- 
cose, but in the case of growing animals, old animals, animals 
bearing offspring, animals nourishing their young, or animals in 
feeble health, it is not known by any scientist to what extent 
the circulation, already overtaxed, possesses the power to rid 
itself daily of a large surplus of glucose, the tolerance toward 
which, as we have already seen, is decidedly limited. 

There is indeed much evidence to support the conviction that 
under such extra burden the controlling organ (the pancreas) 
must succumb to the strain, thus opening the way to the develop- 
ment of that disease, the origin of which seems to be so mys- 
terious, but which all men agree upon in calling it diabetes. 

Pfluger concluded, as a result of his experiments, that there 
is a close relationship between the liver and "pancreas-diabetes," 
declaring that "the liver in diabetes works actively and is the 
most important seat of production in diabetic-sugar." 

Eppinger, Folta and Rudinger have adduced evidence to show 
that there is a certain relationship existing in pancreas-diabetes 
between the pancreas, adrenals and thyroids. 

They assert that it is not the pancreas alone that controls the 
blood-content of glucose. What, then, is to be said of the con- 



306 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

elusions of those scientists who persist in attributing to the 
failure of the pancreas the cause of diabetes and who seem to 
look upon the glucose factor only as a symptom of the disease 
and never as its cause ? 



§ 98 — CAN WE IGNORE THIS? 

We know now positively that the body is tenacious of its 
fixed alkaline bases, and on a diet deficient in these bases it can- 
not long supply the necessary quantity of alkali required to 
neutralise the organic acids which are daily elaborated in the 
blood and tissues as a result of the decomposition of proteins, fats 
and carbohydrates. 

On the one hand there is a deficiency of bases in our refined 
foods and on the other an excess of carbohydrates. No scientist 
would dare to claim seriously in the presence of these facts that 
a physiological equilibrium can be maintained permanently on 
such a broken balance. What would the incomparable Pasteur 
have said of this ? 

Glucose, now used in the manufacture of many commercial 
foods, including nearly all the candies on the market is a min- 
eral-free carbohydrate of artificial origin. 

Packard says cancer is due to a diet of mineral-free carbo- 
hydrates. 

Armand Gautier has demonstrated that the loss of minerals 
by excretion is offset only by constant intake. Neither glucose 
nor any other refined food contributes to this intake. 

Starling and Foster have demonstrated that animals fed on 
demineralised or refined food die sooner than if not fed at all. 
The demineralised canned beef, the extractives of which were all 
boiled out before canning to make beef extract and canned soup, 
which caused so much sickness among our troops during the 
Spanish-American War, is a further illustration of this fact. 

Rolf Wilson says mineral starvation is followed by dire con- 
sequences. 

Takaki, Chamberlain and Vedder have demonstrated that the 
mineral deficiency of refined food is responsible for high mor- 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 307 

tality among breast-fed infants. Mother's milk lacks mineral 
matter in accordance with the mineral deficiency of her food. 

Drennin attributes the rapid course of tuberculosis, after 
pregnancy, to mineral starvation. The foetus acts as a mineral 
parasite, robbing the mother's tissues unless her food supplies 
its needs. 

Czerny declares that natural immunity depends on nutrition 
and that one-sided nutrition with sugars, syrups and candies 
destroys this immunity in children. 

Weigert reports that "tuberculous children succumb more 
quickly when nourished with sugars and starches. The water 
content of the organism is inversely proportioned to the natural 
immunity. Carbohydrates diet increases unnecessarily the 
amount of water in the tissues and prompts a rapid rise in the 
body weight. 

"Such children, who appear plump, round and well nourished, 
are water-logged and show slight resisting power against in- 
fection." In an earlier chapter we saw this. Now we under- 
stand it. 

Various investigators have found that demineralised sweets, 
sugar, glucose, etc., give rise to many disorders. Why do they 
exclude diabetes from the list of these disorders when the chief 
symptom of diabetes lies in its rebellion against sugar, par- 
ticularly its rebellion against glucose ? 

Charles as far back as 1882 declared : "Temporary glycosuria 
may be induced by a diet too rich in starch and sugars, and this 
is more liable to occur with a diminished alkalinity of the blood. 
Permanent glycosuria constitutes diabetes mellitus." 

He says, in other words, that if a temporary glycosuria can 
be induced by an excessive ingestion of refined starchy or sugary 
foods and such excess is continued until the temporary glycosuria 
becomes permanent, the net result of such excess is diabetes. 

He also declares that glucose combines with certain acids and 
bases, as potash and lime, forming glycosates or saccharates, and 
in alkaline solution has a great tendency to absorb oxygen. 

He also makes the significant assertion that in diabetes less 
oxygen is absorbed than in health. 

If glucose is a confiscator of oxygen and if it is observed in 
diabetes that less oxygen is absorbed than in health, is it not 



308 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

indeed time that the role of glucose as an oxygen pirate be inves- 
tigated ? 

The pancreas in health appropriates the salts of lime and 
potash in the elaboration of its normal alkaline secretions, as is 
shown in the analyses of these secretions. 

What scientist will say that this selective action of the pancreas 
on these alkaline bases is devoid of significance or that the nor- 
mal functioning of the pancreas does not depend in any manner 
upon its ability to make use of them? 

Yet, in the presence of the fact that glucose has an affinity 
for these alkaline bases and combines with them, thereby inter- 
fering with their ability to conduct themselves in the tissues and 
internal secretions in accordance with Nature's laws, who will 
say that the excessive ingestion of glucose, in strict obedience to 
its affinity for alkaline bases, does not rob the pancreas of lime 
and potassium salts by combining with them and carrying them 
off? 

If deprived of lime and potassium in this manner, does not 
the pancreas suffer an impairment of its ability to assist in the 
control of the upper limit of the blood content of glucose ? 

Kleiner and Meltzer of the Rockefeller Institute assume (they 
use the word assume) that it is the failure of the pancreas to per- 
form its function which causes diabetes. 

But what causes that failure? 

There is much evidence to support the belief that refined, 
demineralised starches and sugars, of which glucose is the most 
conspicuous type, induce this failure, first by weakening the 
ability of the pancreas to resist the excess glucose assault and, 
second, by permitting the entrance of glucose into the blood 
without hindrance after the glucose bombardment has succeeded 
in breaking down the natural barriers against it. 

The experiments of Kleiner and Meltzer, indicating that in 
health the circulation can utilise only a fixed quantity of glucose 
— o.i per cent. — beyond which the healthy or normal pancreas 
appears to say, "No more shall enter," support the conclusion, 
although not intended to do so, that it is the excess of glucose and 
the excess of other refined and demineralised starches and sugars 
which causes a temporary glycosuria to be superseded by a per- 
manent diabetes, and that the importance which eminent scientists 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 309 

have heretofore attached to the diseased condition of the pan- 
creas in relationship to diabetes is erroneously given to a strik- 
ing and significant symptom of the disease instead of to its 
cause. 



§ 99 — INFANTILE PARALYSIS 

In June, 1916, an epidemic of infantile paralysis broke out in 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 

The disease spread so rapidly that after 187 deaths had been 
reported in New York City and hundreds of cases discovered 
in eleven states and Canada, Health Commissioner Haven Emer- 
son announced that he would appeal to the National Red Cross 
for help. 

Three thousand three hundred physicians and nurses were put 
to work in New York and Brooklyn, and the Health Department 
informed the public that the United States Public Health Service 
and the Rockefeller Institute would begin active work at once 
to assist in stamping out the scourge. 

Fifty-five street playgrounds were ordered closed. Every chil- 
dren's reading room in Manhattan and Brooklyn was closed. 
Sunday schools were closed. Summer camps were broken up. 
Children not only could not cross the state line but they were 
not permitted by the police to pass from town to town. 

Dr. Lewis C. Ager called for public subscriptions to buy 
braces and other supporting devices for victims of the disease. 

Then came this remarkable statement, July 9th, 1916, from 
Professor Simon Baruch, who diagnosed the first recorded case 
of perforating appendicitis successfully operated on, and who 
is one of the foremost members of the American medical pro- 
fession : 

"For several months I have watched the scientific development 
of the malign influence of defective or absent vitamines in cer- 
tain foods, as published in the weekly reports of the United 
States Public Health Service, together with articles in the 
medical journals on beri-beri and pellagra. 

"Pigeons fed on polished rice are affected by paralysis, tech- 
nically called polyneuritis, which begins with loss of weight and 



310 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

ends fatally. Dr. Sidell found that pigeons fed on this exclusive 
diet did not become paralysed (within the two months of experi- 
ment at least) if they were given also some otherwise useless 
yeast products (rich in mineral salts) from the brewery vats 
which are usually wasted. He has also shown that if this waste 
material be given to a pigeon already paralysed it will recover 
within an hour and to all appearances it will be normal in twelve 
hours. 

"There is a striking similarity in some of the causes predis- 
posing to infantile paralysis and beri-beri. Both occur chiefly 
in overcrowded localities, in hot weather, and more among males 
than females. Both are accompanied by fever and paralysis, 
and both are extremely fatal. Both have prevailed as epidemics, 
and their fatality has caused terror and despair. 

"Beri-beri was formerly regarded as an infectious disease from 
undiscoverable sources, but is now known to be due chiefly if not 
solely to absence of vitamines in the diet. 

"May not infantile paralysis, which has eluded thus far the 
most searching investigations, be likewise traceable to some 
defect in diet that may be discovered ? 

"We have a clue to the possibilities in this direction in the 
report of the United States Public Health Service of April 17th, 
191 6, on bread as food, in which the fact is clearly brought out 
that the fine roller-milled wheat flour is devoid of vitamines, and 
that owing to the use of baking powders containing bicarbonate 
of soda the vitamines in other foods are likely to be destroyed. 

"In a study of pellagra in South Carolina, Voeghtlin regards 
this malady as somewhat related to beri-beri. He found that this 
disease prevailed in the factory districts, where people eat mostly 
fat bacon, cereals and soda raised biscuits or corn bread made 
of highly milled corn, while in the backwoods, where coarsely 
milled grain is used, pellagra is rare. 

"The high cost of vitamine-containing foods, like eggs, milk 
and meats, makes it impossible for these poor people to protect 
themselves against the loss of vitamines in purchased cereal 
foods. 

"It may be of interest to ascertain if infantile paralysis has 
been more prevalent since 1878, when the new milling processes 
were invented. I omitted to mention as proof of similarity of 



FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 311 

causes that the experiments made on pigeons have been con- 
firmed in chicken, which fed on whole corn remain healthy, 
while the same fowls fed on highly milled cornmeal are affected 
with paralysis. 

"These briefly stated scientific facts lead me to believe that 
close scrutiny of the food of the children afflicted may lead to the 
discovery of a dietetic cause of infantile paralysis." 

Perhaps it will be found that the diet of the mother before 
the birth of the infant predisposed it to infantile paralysis. 



EIGHT: PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES OF 
MILK AND MEAT 



EIGHT: PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES OF MILK AND 

MEAT 

§ 100 — MILK 

Every boy at the front in 1918 underwent a radical change of 
habit. There was no easy transition through which to slide grace- 
fully from the comforts of peace into the hardships of war, yet 
here at home we seek to go on as before, leaving to our sons and 
brothers the glory of dying for a principle. 

We know that milk is a perfect food, the cheapest of all 
animal foods, and that our money now goes only half as far as it 
used to go. Notwithstanding this we beheld in 1918 milk stations 
closing their doors, and farmers sending their cows to the butch- 
er's block because the people did not consume the great flood of 
milk pouring in from the country at war prices. 

The Bankers' Trust Company informs us there are approxi- 
mately 27,301,199 family groups and wage-earning individuals 
counted as families in the United States. In 191 6, 24,428,000 
had annual incomes of $2,000 or less. Millions of families 
strive to nourish and develop their children on incomes less 
than $1,000 a year. 

Although milk in times of stress is in itself sufficient to save 
the infant, the findings of the Children's Bureau with reference 
to Baltimore show that only 29 per cent, of the children be- 
tween the ages of two and seven years were receiving in 1918 
fresh milk to drink as against 60 per cent, in 19 17, and that less 
than 3 per cent, of these children received as much as three 
cups of milk a day. 

H. C. Sherman, Columbia University, has demonstrated that of 
all the food value of the food consumed by farm animals we 
recover less than 4 per cent, in beef, the actual figures according 
to Armsby being 3.5 per cent., whereas 18 per cent, is recovered 
in the form of milk. 

Cooper and Spillman demonstrate that the crops produced per 

315 



316 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

acre of cultivated farm land will yield but 14 pounds of mutton, 
18 pounds of beef, 22 pounds of pork, 27 pounds of poultry and 
e ggs, and J2 pounds of milk estimated on a protein basis. 

It is thus seen that a quart of milk is a greater food asset than 
an amount of meat furnishing the same weight of protein. 

Osborne, Mendell, McCollum, Hart and Humphrey have dem- 
onstrated the value of those substances found in whole milk 
which promote growth and perform other important functions in 
maintaining health. 

Back in 1906 Hopkins discovered the fat soluble "A" of cream 
and the water soluble "B' J of skim milk. Seeking further light 
on the nature of these then unknown substances he withheld pub- 
lication of the details of his experiments until 1916. 

During the same period Osborne and Mendell were demon- 
strating the same facts. To these facts McCollum and Davis 
have also contributed. 

Milk is not only the most benevolent and useful of man's 
friends, it is also the most treacherous of his foes. Countless 
thousands of mothers, were it not for the saving virtues of 
milk, would be in mourning for their lost infants, and countless 
thousands of mothers are suffering the anguish that only a 
mother can understand through the untimely taking off of their 
little ones, murdered by milk. 

The health of the cow and the methods employed in making 
milk safe have been sadly neglected in America. We know the 
truth but do not apply it. 

Because milk is such a perfect food for the human being, it is 
also a perfect food for the micro-organisms that spread tuber- 
culosis, diphtheria, septic sore throat, typhoid fever and many 
other diseases that afflict the human race already devitalised 
and non-resistant through its morbid consumption of refined 
starches and sugars. 

The United States Government has tabulated 500 epidemics 
of typhoid fever, scarlet fever and diphtheria caused by milk. 
These epidemics are but a few of those reported. They merely 
indicate the enormous extent to which milk, the great life- 
saver, becomes a destroyer. 

Bad milk can be eliminated and good milk, at least safe milk, 
can be substituted in its place. Under the honest supervision 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 317 

of any adequately organised health department in small town or 
city, milk when properly pasteurised is a blessing. When not 
properly pasteurised it is a curse. 

Unlike eggs, meat, poultry and fish, milk cannot be stored in 
refrigerator warehouses for a year. It cannot be held for specu- 
lation. It cannot be refined as wheat, oats, corn, rice, barley, 
rye and sugar are refined. It brings into the home all the food 
substances in abundance, except iron alone. 

The young animal stores up iron in its liver before its birth 
sufficient to carry it out of the milk consuming period. 

As long ago as 1826 Magenhofen in his laboratory in Frank- 
fort determined the composition of milk, separating the lime, 
potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, sulphur, fluorine, 
silicon, iron, the sugars, fats and casein. All the analyses made 
since his time have been identical. 

The English authority, A. Wynter Blyth, declared in 1909 
that Magenho fen's treatise on milk, though little known, con- 
tains practically all of what, up to that time, had been established 
concerning its composition. 

The iron of milk is sufficient for the child up to one year of 
age, but thereafter it requires more iron which unhappily it does 
not receive from white bread, or sugar. 

These milk facts should be remembered, but facts more im- 
portant than these are about to attack us. 



§ 101 — MILK AND TUBERCULOSIS 

God intended cow's milk for the food of calves to be consumed 
at the udder. Milk from the clean udder of a healthy cow is prac- 
tically sterile. The calf's food under normal conditions is not 
only free from germs, it is fresh. 

The child receives cow's milk from twelve to seventy hours old. 
Good cow's milk depends upon four factors — a healthy cow, a 
clean cow, plenty of ice and speedy transportation. 

If the cow is not healthy the milk is dangerous even when 
fresh. If the cow itself and the hands of the milker are not clean, 
or if the milk-can is not sterile, the milk becomes infected at once, 
even though it be good as it leaves the udder. 



318 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

If not kept cold the germs multiply by the millions. One drop 
of milk may contain 40,000,000 bacteria twenty-four hours after 
milking. 

The germs of typhoid fever and diphtheria enter milk through 
careless or dirty methods of handling. The germs of bovine 
tuberculosis are introduced through a diseased udder or through 
small particles of manure which are frequently found infected 
with virulent tubercle bacilli. 

The United States government as well as the governments of 
Great Britain and Germany have proved the deadliness of bad 
milk and the meaning of bacteria as an index of its quality. 
Practical and efficient methods of controlling these dangers have 
been evolved, but in only a few American cities have they been 
applied. 

If milk were a transparent fluid its luxuriant colonies of bac- 
teria and their accompanying poisons could be seen by the naked 
eye. Because milk is opalescent the presence of these infant 
murderers is not suspected. The human eye can easily see a 
colony but only through the microscope can a single germ be 
detected. 

It is common for milk to reach our large cities containing 
150,000,000 bacteria per cubic centimetre. Even these enormous 
quantities cannot be detected by the naked eye. 

Such milk is polluted with B. coli found only in the intestines 
of warm-blooded animals. Finding their way into milk through 
particles of manure they rapidly multiply. B. coli in milk means 
that the milk is filthy. 

The most poorly equipped Health Department in America can 
determine the presence of B. coli in the milk consumed by its 
children, and through the authority possessed by it can shut such 
milk out until the dairy farmer substitutes decency for indecency. 

Bovine tuberculosis is transmissible to the child not only 
through milk but through potcheese, ice cream, butter and raw 
meat, such as the uncooked bolognas common throughout the 
United States. 

Bovine tuberculosis does not necessarily kill; it usually mains 
or cripples. Its ravages do not manifest themselves at their 
worst until early adult life. 

Bang proved conclusively that virulent tubercle bacilli are 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 319 

found in milk. Hirschberger found n out of 20 specimens of 
milk from tubercular cows contained tubercle bacilli. Ernst 
found 42 per cent, of the cows examined by him were giving off 
tubercle bacilli in the milk, and that the milk of 36 tubercular cows 
with healthy udders contained tubercle bacilli. 

Rabinowitz and Kempner found tubercle bacilli in 71.4 per cent, 
of the milk examined by them. Prokauer found 55 per cent, of 
the milk examined by him contained tubercle bacilli. Anderson, 
United States Public Health Service, found 11 in 104 dairies 
shipping milk to Washington, D. C, were selling a product con- 
taining virulent tubercle bacilli. 

Mitchell asserts that milk containing tubercle bacilli is the 
cause of 90 per cent, of the cases of tubercular cervical lymph 
nodes in Edinburgh infants and children. Mitchell found 10 
per cent, of the enlarged tonsils of children infected with the 
bovine tubercle bacillus. 

Of the school children examined in Berlin by the von Pirquet 
method, 70 per cent, were found to be infected with tuberculosis 
of the bovine type, thus revealing the fact that before the war 
400,000 in Germany were annually infected through the milk, 
butter, potcheese and meat of tubercular cows. 

Styles found 61 per cent, of the 67 cases of tuberculosis of the 
joints in children examined by him to be caused by the bovine 
bacillus, due to infection through milk, butter, ice cream or meat. 
In all the affected children less than one year old Styles found 
the bovine bacillus present. 

All these children had been fed exclusively on cow's milk. 

Fraser, operating upon 70 cases of bone and joint tuberculosis 
in children under twelve years of age, found 31 cases of the 
bovine type, showing the diseased cow to be responsible for their 
misery. Of 25 children brought up exclusively on human milk 
Fraser found only 6 infected with bovine bacillus, the infection 
in these cases having come from butter. Of 41 children fed on 
cow's milk, Fraser found 37 infected with the bovine type and 
only 4 with the human type. 

The British Royal Commission on tuberculosis reports that 
among fatal cases in children, one-third are found to be due to 
the bovine type. 

Of 500 autopsies performed by Muller on children, the deaths 



320 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of 200 cases were attributed to tuberculosis of which an unde- 
termined number was of the bovine type, showing the deadliness 
of raw milk. 

Ravenel, studying 153 cases of tuberculous children from 5 to 
16 years of age, found 36 due to bovine infection, whereas out of 
280 cases of children under 5 years of age he found 65 due to 
bovine infection. 

The Imperial Bureau of Hygiene reported before the war that 
2,700 children died annually in Germany of bovine tuberculosis. 

We know now beyond our right to dismiss the facts with a 
shrug, that bovine tuberculosis does kill our children, and that 
they have little resistance to the disease because of their enormous 
consumption of white bread and refined sugars. 

Let us see whether or not only a few dairy cows in America 
are suffering from tuberculosis, or whether the disease is wide 
spread, so that we may determine the gravity of the raw milk 
peril. 



§ 102 NOT PASTEURISED 

Ward reports at least 10 per cent, of the cattle killed in the 
San Francisco stockyards, coming from open ranges, are tubercu- 
lar. 

Melvin, United States Bureau of Animal Industry, declares 
that at least 10 per cent, of the dairy cattle of the entire country 
are tubercular. 

Veranus A. Moore, Cornell, found 302 herds in a total of 421 
contained tubercular cows. Of 9,633 dairy cows tested by him 
3,432, more than a third, were tubercular. 

These diseased herds were distributed throughout 39 counties. 
The tuberculin test is such a reliable index of the presence of the 
disease that out of 23,869 cows reacting positively to the test, the 
disease was found in 23,585 when slaughtered, a percentage of 
nearly 99. 

The United States Government publishes a bulletin warning 
dairymen and cattle growers of the dangers of the disease. That 
bulletin says: "Among tubercular dairy cows retaining the ap- 
pearance of health and not known to be affected until tested with 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 321 

tuberculin, 40 per cent, or more, are actively expelling tubercle 
bacilli from their bodies in a way dangerous to the health of other 
animals and persons. 

"When tubercle bacilli are present in milk they are especially 
numerous in butter. The dangers to which public health is ex- 
posed through the use of milk from tubercular cows is of a 
magnitude almost beyond conception. 

"The distribution of tubercle bacilli is a commercial systematic 
distribution from door to door, or rather from table to table. As 
long as the use of tubercular dairy cows is permitted the manner 
in which unpasteurised dairy products are at present distributed 
will insure that practically every member of the human family 
is exposed to tuberculosis. 

"This may explain why 91 per cent, of the bodies of persons 
who die from various causes show the lesions of tuberculosis." 

In spite of these and hundreds of other facts indicating the 
vast extent to which tuberculosis menaces the consumer of raw 
milk, raw butter, raw ice cream and raw meat, and the vast ex- 
tent to which tuberculosis of the bovine type actually ravages 
the human family, dairymen and cattle dealers openly oppose 
all efforts of public health authorities to apply the two remedies 
by which humanity can be protected from these dangers. 

They ignore pasteurisation, which destroys all disease germs in 
milk, and they fight the tuberculin test, although for their own 
purposes they employ it to cover up the evidences of disease by 
"plugging" their cows with secret doses in order to mask the 
symptoms when an official test is made. 



§ 103 — PLUGGING THE COW 

In New York, New Jersey and Illinois the "plugging" of 
tubercular cows with illegal doses of tuberculin has reached such 
vast proportions that in a number of instances even honest officials 
have been rendered powerless through this method of trickery. 

Cattle men have discovered that a dose of tuberculin injected 
into the neck of a tubercular cow is followed by a peculiar 
phenomenon which scientists call "reaction." 



322 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

A few hours after the test is applied the tubercular cow suffers 
a rise in temperature. The fever continues until it reaches its 
climax, after which it begins to subside, forming the typical react- 
ing curve. 

After this reaction the tubercular cow for a period of three or 
four weeks will not respond to another test unless it be a double 
dose. During this short period of immunity an official test with 
a single dose made by a winking veterinarian will fail to disclose 
the presence of the disease. 

Thus the conscienceless owner of a diseased cow "plugs" the 
animal with a secret dose, waits four or five days, then asks for 
an official test. A clean bill of health over the signature of a 
state veterinarian is then issued, and the cow can be sold even 
to the famous certified herds. 

In cases of generalised tuberculosis in which nearly every gland 
and organ of the cow's body is involved, the animal is so full of 
toxins of its own manufacture that it either fails to react to the 
tuberculin test or suffers what is called a delayed reaction. 

The so-called official tests terminating at the twenty-fourth 
hour do not detect the delayed reaction, although such cow is 
a hundredfold more dangerous. All tests should be continued to 
the thirty-sixth hour, otherwise they are worthless. 

These conditions are not occasional, they are common. 

The annual report of the New York State Department of 
Agriculture, Bureau of Veterinary Service for 1913, of which 
I have a certified copy, was actually suppressed because of the 
wide-spread evils it revealed. The politicians were afraid of its 
publication, fearing the farmer vote. 

When the New York City Health Department detects diseased 
milk it shuts out the dairy farm. This diseased milk is then con- 
sumed by people who are not fortunate enough to live in the 
metropolis. 

To emphasise the tragedy of this system, Dr. S. S. Goldwater, 
Health Commissioner, sent a message February 26th, 19 14, to 
Governor Glynn's Milk Commission. That message which every 
small town in the United States should study, read as follows: 

"Yesterday we discovered another typhoid carrier in one of 
the milk-producing farms from which the Health Department has 
traced a number of cases of typhoid fever. The milk of this farm 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 323 

has now been excluded from the list of milk shippers to New 
York, but owing to inadequate state control this typhoid-produc- 
ing milk will now be shipped to the smaller towns which will have 
to suffer as a result of New York's vigilance. If the smaller 
towns were under state regulations instead of being allowed to 
go as they please, these tragic conditions would not be possible." 

March 25th, 1914, the New York Milk Committee, numbering 
among its members many of the most eminent pathologists of 
the metropolis, issued a public statement declaring that nine out 
of every ten children suffering from tubercular cervical glands 
would be sound and healthy as far as tuberculosis is concerned 
if they had not been fed with the milk of diseased cows. 

All but 10 per cent, of the people of New York State drink 
raw milk, which means that 4,000,000 children are directly ex- 
posed to the most dreaded infection that curses the human race. 

One-third of the cows of the state are spreading tuberculosis 
among human infants. A large percentage of the beef sold in 
the smaller butcher shops in the state consists of the carcasses 
of dairy animals suffering from tuberculosis at the time of 
slaughter. 

It is through this source of infection that the pitiable conditions 
of thousands of children under ten years of age, and the fatal 
illness of scores of adults, are to be traced. Low resistance and 
constant infection ! What an indictment of our intelligence ! 

The facts were laid before the Senate and Assembly, and cat- 
tle dealers immediately gathered at Albany from all parts of the 
country. The political pressure applied by them disarmed the 
legislators of the Empire State, and nothing was done. 

Before the war politicians subordinated the physical welfare of 
the children of their constituents to their own political advance- 
ment. The boys who went to France to die have at least taught 
them by another kind of example the hellishness of such phi- 
losophy. 

The efforts to open the eyes of these politicians were not alto- 
gether fruitless. It developed as a result of the agitation that 
more than two million dollars of the state's money had been 
wasted by the Department of Agriculture between 1907 and 1914 
through indemnities granted to a select list of politically powerful 
owners of tubercular cows. 



324 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

It was also shown that these cows after condemnation and 
slaughter were either installed in State reformatories, hospitals, 
training schools, orphan asylums, and prisons to infect their in- 
mates, or were slaughtered and their meat sold to butchers. 

It was shown that the junior member of a cattle dealing firm 
had applied to Dr. J. William Fink, state veterinarian, for a 
tuberculin test of a diseased herd producing milk for consumption 
in New York City. 

Dr. Fink was asked to apply a fake test and give a clean bill of 
health to the diseased cows in order that they might be shipped 
across the state line into New Jersey. Dr. Fink refused to make 
the test, but another state veterinarian succumbed to the tempta- 
tion and the cows were given a clean bill of health. 

An investigation showed that all the cows were grossly diseased. 
They had to be condemned for fertiliser. 

The arrests that followed involved such a large number of New 
Jersey and New York officials, and disclosed so many similar out- 
rages, that it became necessary to apply a coat of political white- 
wash to the guilty parties. 

There is no such thing as blissful ignorance in the fool's para- 
dise. The fool's children pay too great a price for the folly of 
their father. 



§ 104 — THE CERTIFIED HERD 

Certified milk is raw milk. Unless such milk be honestly 
certified it is more dangerous than common milk, because on the 
assumption of its safety it is fed to delicate infants and invalids, 
whose powers of resistance are even lower than the low average. 
We are not discussing the honest certified herd. We are discuss- 
ing the control of all certified milk. 

In spite of the efforts of the Montclair Board of Health, a 
certified herd, numbering six hundred cows, succeeded in defying 
the Board for two years because of the dignity of the Medical 
Milk Commission that stood sponsor for its certified milk, "guar- 
anteed to be free from the germs of the contagious and infectious 
disease known as bovine tuberculosis. " 

Finally, October 13th, 1914, after conditions had become so 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 325 

gross that it was impossible further to withhold knowledge of 
them from the public, the Essex County Medical Milk Commis- 
sion, the first commission in America authorised by law to certify 
milk, was asked to interfere on the ground that the certified herd 
harbored at least one hundred diseased cows. 

The dignified Medical Milk Commission refused to admit that 
irregularities were possible under its system of supervision, and 
resisted the invitation to perform its duty. 

It was my privilege to expose to the public the wretched farce 
of this scientific superstition and the complete collapse of the 
certified milk myth which prior thereto had flourished at the ex- 
pense of helpless infants. 

We invaded the dairy and made a test of its cows. Within 
a period of two weeks, up to and including October 28th, 1914, 
two hundred and fifty-four cows were tested. Of these certified 
cows seventy-nine were found suffering from tuberculosis, yet 
all of them, up to the very day of their slaughter, were producing 
"certified" milk for infants and invalids. 

Of these condemned cows twenty-four were sold to a Brooklyn 
slaughter house. I had reason to know that a vast system of 
Health Department corruption was operating through the graft 
route in this slaughter house. 

I laid the facts before the Government, and for once was suc- 
cessful in inducing the Federal authorities to seize these twenty- 
four cows in Jersey City on their way through interstate com- 
merce to Brooklyn. They were slaughtered, October 28th, for 
purposes of post mortem. 

The examinations were conducted by Bureau of Animal In- 
dustry veterinarians Dr. E. C. Yoder, Dr. Frederick Wilson and 
Dr. Robert M. Mullins. The witnesses in addition to the writer 
included Dr. J. E. Smith, president New Jersey Medical Associa- 
tion, Dr. James McDonough, Montclair Board of Health, Dr. 
Wilbur F. Harrison, Jersey City, Health Officer James Hagan, 
Jersey City, and Dr. R. C. Newton, president New Jersey State 
Board of Health. 

The Essex County Medical Milk Commission, which had certi- 
fied to the milk produced by these twenty-four cows, was not 
represented. 

All the cows were found grossly diseased, and under the regu- 



326 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

lations of the United States Government, the generalised cases 
were sent to the fertiliser tank. 

Certified cow No. 3184, producing certified milk for infants, 
was typical of the tragedy. She was found to be suffering from 
tuberculosis of the bronchial glands, tuberculosis of both lungs, 
tuberculosis of the portal gland, tuberculosis of the mediastinal 
gland and tuberculosis of the liver. 

Following this examination another group of twenty-four 
cows was seized on its way to the Brooklyn slaughter houses and 
slaughtered under Government supervision. They were all dis- 
eased. 

After one hundred and ninety-one cows had been condemned 
in the certified herd, which had been looked upon as a model 
throughout the Medical Milk Commissions of the United States, 
the first Medical Milk Commission established in America passed 
into the waste heap of rejected rubbish. Eminent academicians 
who had been forcing certified milk upon the public for years, 
reluctantly admitted that diseased cows really could produce 
diseased milk under the shadows of inflated scientific reputations. 

The laity had paid the bills, had borne the burden of the mis- 
takes, had suffered the pains of disease. 

The sad events which, upon these disclosures, followed each 
other in dizzy succession, exposed such a condition of complete 
demoralisation of many of the most famous certified herds of 
the country, that had the newspapers reported the facts it is quite 
certain somebody would have gone to jail. 

Thanks to the encouragement and support of the three men to 
whom this book is dedicated, I was able to stick to the scandal 
out of which subsequently many convictions were obtained, re- 
sulting in penitentiary sentences. 



§ 105 — OLD OFFENDERS 

Nineteen certified herds within a period of six months were 
found to be literally rotten with tuberculosis, and as far as New 
York City is concerned, a new system of supervision was inaug- 
urated by Dr. S. S. Goldwater. 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 327 

Following the trail into Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Wiscon- 
sin, I was able to demonstrate with evidence just as specific and 
conclusive that the dairy butter and ice cream industries were 
quite as rotten as the certified milk industry. Both industries 
required nation-wide reform, of which, at this writing, August 
28th, 1918, no indications are visible. The facts are known to the 
United States Department of Agriculture and the United States 
Public Health Service, but no official action has been taken. 

Justice James C. Cropsey, Supreme Court, Brooklyn, October 
4th, 1916, emphasised the horror of these unmolested conditions 
by sentencing a group of convicted slaughterers to Sing Sing. 

Five slaughtering establishments had been operating for twenty- 
five years in Brooklyn. They specialised in the killing of diseased 
cows, culled from the dairy herds of the country. These cows, 
milked as long as they were profitable, were finally, after a career 
of poisoning the milk, butter and ice cream of the people, salvaged 
through the peoples' stomachs. 

Sixty thousand such cows were killed annually in these five 
establishments. 

By the payment of graft to the extent of $30,000 a year, or 
50 cents a head to the officials, the carcasses of the diseased ani- 
mals were stamped with the official "inspected and passed" seaL 

For four years the officials succeeded in resisting my efforts to 
break up this deadly system. Finally, through the assistance of 
Commissioner of Accounts, Leonard M. Wallstein, legal evidence 
was obtained which resulted in the indictment of twelve 
slaughterers whose establishments, May 26th, 1916, operating as a 
single unit in a vast system of units, were shut down, thus scatter- 
ing the diseased dairy culls through the smaller towns and cities 
of the country. 

The wholesale convictions that followed have meant nothing 
to the officials of other states, and the parade of diseased meat 
continues. Even the success of Commissioner Wallstein in col- 
lecting $1,025 graft money before the trap was sprung that 
finally bagged the Brooklyn operators, had little or no meaning 
for other officials, who to-day remain as inactive as they were two 
years ago. 

The packers who have persistently denied the charges made 
against them by the Federal Trade Commission, 191 8, and whose 



«• I 



328 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

denials have been given wide publicity by the newspapers carrying 
their advertisements, cannot hurdle the evidences of their guilt, 
even though they succeed in fooling the public. 

On forty-seven occasions, unarmed with official authority, I 
have obtained in the last five years forty-seven convictions against 
Armour & Company, Swift & Company, and Sulzberger & Sons 
Company (now Wilson & Company). These convictions are 
all recorded. They resulted in fines of $500 each, the limit per- 
mitted under the statute. 

The newspapers that have given publicity to their denial of 
guilt, with the exception of the New York Globe and the Chicago 
Daily News, did not publish the details of any of these convic- 
tions. 

"Old offenders" are sometimes looked upon by the courts grave- 
ly and solemnly, but only as a rule when they are commonplace 
offenders whose crimes are the crimes of human infirmity. 

July 5th, 1915, a poor creature pleaded guilty before Justice 
Petit of Chicago on the charge of stealing two hams, and was 
sentenced to the penitentiary for life under the "old offender" 
statute. 

"The world will be informed," said Justice Petit in imposing 
sentence, "that I have sent you to the penitentiary for life for 
stealing two hams. I have not done that. Your record shows you 
are a crook, and it is time that the country finds a way to keep 
habitual offenders like you in jail." 

One week later a Federal-inspected establishment, Swift & 
Company, was convicted in the courts of New York for the 
sixteenth time within a period of two years, and fined $500 on a 
charge of trafficking in putrid flesh. 

I was responsible for the sixteenth conviction of this offending 
corporation, and it seemed to me that under the "old offender" 
act a corporation guilty in the same community of the same crime 
on sixteen occasions within a period of two years is an old 
offender. 

Justices Russel, Salmon, Kernochen, Moss, Collins, Herrman, 
Mclnerny, Zeller, Forker, O'Keefe and Freschi during this short 
period collected $20,000 in fines from Armour & Company, Swift 
& Company, and Sulzberger and Sons Company. In only one 
case did the convicted establishments appeal. In that appeal the 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 329 

conviction of the lower court was upheld by the Appellate Divi- 
sion, on which sat Justices Ingraham, McLaughlin, Scott, Dowling 
and Hotchkiss. 

In imposing sentence in one of these cases, Justice Russel had 
perhaps the old offender statute in mind, for he said : "We can- 
not send a corporation to jail. It is no wonder then that you con- 
tinue without fear in your assault upon human life and health. 
When it is considered that this court has the power to send an 
individual to jail for such an offence as you have committed 
but can do no more in dealing with the same offence when com- 
mitted by a corporation than impose a paltry fine which by an 
establishment doing a business of more than $400,000,000 annual- 
ly, must be looked upon as inconsequential and without signifi- 
cance, it is not strange that there are agitators abroad who cry out 
like John the Eaptist against these inhuman sins so difficult to 
detect and so inadequately punished when brought to trial." 

These specific instances are recorded here for the reason that in 
spite of the existence of the "old offender" statute and the evi- 
dence of corruption that has flowed in a steady stream from my 
self-appointed and unofficial investigations, the authorities have 
persisted in ignoring their duty, while from the milk-producing 
herds of the country the culls and rejects, the lame and the halt, 
the diseased and the spreaders of disease continue to pass un- 
molested into the food supply of the people. 



§ 106 — America's kidxeycides 

The meatless days established, 191 8, by the Food Administra- 
tion were wisely appointed, but the suicidal gluttons of America 
thought otherwise, and the Food Administration, heeding the 
clamor, decided it was not necessary to stop the assault and 
battery tendencies of Americans with respect to their kidneys, and 
"meatless days" were wiped off the calendar. 

Prior to the last week of February, 191 8, in America, man's 
efforts to spare his kidneys constituted patriotism. After that he 
could beat his kidneys to death with a ciub t if he wanted to, and 
still be a patriot. 



330 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Sink your canines into as many bloody, bawdy, kindless steaks 
as you have a mind to ! Grind the juicy cadaver between your 
molars — if you have any molars ! Go to a dentist and have your- 
self equipped with crowns, bridges, or any other device that will 
enable you to pound to a pulp all the dead flesh your appetite 
-desires ! Nothing will now stop you but the price — unless it be 
your own intelligence. 

The man who over-exercises his kidneys, in the performance of 
which he must under-exercise his brains, will not contribute much 
to the world's welfare. The converse of this self-evident truth 
will hold water without leaking. 

Homicide is punishable under the State law. Suicide is be- 
lieved by millions to be punishable under the Divine law. Kidney- 
«cide goes scot-free. 

All of this may make the angels weep; but incidentally it en- 
abled five packers to pile up net profits of a hundred million dol- 
lars a year. 

These five packers did not make very much money on a single 
pound of meat, nor did they prior to 1918 pay a living wage to 
their employes ; but they killed so many animals and sold so much 
meat that what they called their "turn-over" enabled them to 
pay dividends of something like forty per cent, on the money 
invested in their plants. Therefore, unlike the angels, they did 
not weep while Americans were condemning their kidneys to 
hari-kari. 

Most of the kidneycides of America never heard of Anthony 
Bassler or the American Journal of Electro-therapeutics and 
Radiology. They do not care much about the comments of Bass- 
ler, as published in that journal, upon the significant fact, now 
conclusively proved, that the human body cannot utilise more 
than two ounces of protein a day. 

Four ounces of beefsteak, roast beef, lamb chops, pork chops, 
sausage, bologna, chicken, fish or ham contain two ounces of 
protein. 

Therefore Bassler cries out that four ounces of any kind of 
meat a day should be the extreme limit, even for gluttons, be- 
cause any quantity of meat in excess of four ounces must be 
thrown off as waste by the healthy body or stored up as poisons 
for the kidneys to remove. 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 331 

Even the boys in their first year in the medical schools know 
that it is this overload which gradually smashes the kidneys and 
throws them out of commission. 

What is protein ? Milk is protein. Eggs are protein. Cheese 
is protein. Nuts are protein. A very large part of wheat, corn, 
barley and rye is protein, about one-eighth. 

In America, as stated at the hearing before the Committee on 
Agriculture of the United States Senate in April, 191 7, by Secre- 
tary Houston, we produced the year before 22,400,000,000 
pounds of meat, 7,900,000,000 gallons of milk, 1,847,000,000 
dozens of eggs, 567,000,000 fowls ; and so many billion pounds of 
cereal protein that there aren't sufficient ciphers left in the lino- 
type machine to tell the story here. 

The story wouldn't mean anything, anyhow, if it hadn't been 
for the testimony before the same Committee of Dr. Clyde L. 
King, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University 
of Pennsylvania. Dr. King showed that in the United States we 
consume daily 80 grams, or nearly 3 ounces, of protein, whereas 
even in Germany, whose inhabitants were all fed up before the 
war, only 61 grams were consumed. The figures for France be- 
fore the war were 44 grams ; for Japan, 14 grams ; for Austria, 
2.J grams ; for Russia, 26 grams ; for Italy, 52 grams. 

The statements made here are not sweeping statements. They 
have gone to headquarters for their authority and are fool-proof. 

All of which means that Americans in consuming eighty grams 
of protein daily are attempting the impossible. We are attempting 
to dispose of about thirty-five grams more than we have capacity 
for. Our kidneys cannot talk. They just have to stay mum 
until a hundred and one bodily disorders start us looking around 
for some mysterious cause of serious trouble. Then, as a rule, 
it is too late to apologise to the kidneys. 

The plain facts recorded here might have some consolation in 
them if they really told the whole story ; but they do nothing of 
the kind. Babies, old people, sick people, children under ten or 
fifteen years of age, and the very poor — who are becoming more 
numerous in America — do not consume the daily average of 
eighty grams of protein. 

To keep the average up to this high level, the kidneycides have 
to eat not only their own share and the vast excess representing 



332 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

the difference between their own share and what they ought to 
eat, but also the left-overs which the babies, old people, and the 
others cannot eat and do not eat. This hoists the total for millions 
of kidneycides far above the eighty-gram mark and it is quite evi- 
dent that there are many millions of kidneycides in America who 
consume one hundred grams and not a few who consume one hun- 
dred and fifty grams. 

No ; such people are not patriots. They do not help win war. 
They are the kidneyviki of America, and if it were not for the fact 
that the chaos over which they exercise control is the product of 
gross ignorance, I would subscribe to the proposition that they 
ought to be taken out, shot, and converted into fertiliser with 
which to enrich the wheat fields, orchards and vineyards of the 
Nation. 

These kidneyviki, who ought to know that they cannot con- 
sume more than four ounces of meat, including poultry, cheese, 
and eggs, daily, without injuring themselves, ought to know also 
that in Europe there is very much less than four ounces of meat 
a day to consume. Why, then, should they complain of meatless 
days? They can well afford, with benefit to themselves, to do 
without meat on meatless days in order that from their savings 
they may supply at least part of the needs of America's friends. 



§ 107 — MEATOLOGY 

The failure of meat to supply the needs of the body can be 
understood from the fact that it is easy to bring about in young 
dogs a condition resembling "rickets" in children by feeding 
the dogs on meats and fats alone. If pulverised bone is added 
to their diet the young dogs recover quickly. 

I do not for a moment agree with those who claim that there- 
is no place whatever for animal flesh in the diet of man. It 
is well known that there are times when a meat diet is valuable, 
provided the meat is cut from the carcass of a healthy animal 
and none of its extractives are lost in cooking. Yet we should 
remember that catarrh, rheumatism, blood diseases, and many 
other physical disorders cannot be cured where meat is con- 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 333 

sumed in excess. Meat is one of the pegs in our national shoe. 

When we eat the flesh of an animal we eat the end-products 
of the animal's life processes : urea, uric acid, the animal sweat, 
dead cells, toxic waste, etc. When we eat whole grains, legumes 
and milk, the nitrogen supply is just as great, even greater, with- 
out the urea and the other poisons. 

In comparing the merits of a heavy flesh diet with a diet 
of whole grains, eggs and milk, we stumble into another point of 
tremendous interest. For every pound of beef consumed by 
man, ten pounds of corn are necessary to produce that pound 
of beef. A pound of beef will partly support a man for a given 
length of time ; but the same quantity of corn necessary to yield 
that pound of beef will support ten men for the same length 
of time. 

Leibig, as we have already seen, cites the restlessness and 
incessant activity of meat-eating animals — lions, tigers, panthers, 
wolves, hyenas — and observes that men who habitually cram 
themselves with meat manifest similar irritability and lack of 
repose. 

This condition of high pressure in the vital processes is merely 
functional excitement — not true invigoration. To be whipped 
into stimulation is not to be strengthened or recreated. Let us 
not forget that the meat-eating animals pace up and down with 
a certain wildness of movement, while the elephant, camel and 
horse exhibit all the dignity of reposeful strength. 

When man attempts to live on an excess of meat and is forced 
to neutralise the waste products produced by meat digestion and 
in addition is also forced to neutialise the waste products con- 
tinually generating in his own body, thereby imposing upon his 
organs of elimination a double task, he is at the same time at- 
tempting to sustain himself with imperfect foods. Then he com- 
plains of constipation, biliousness, headache and albumen. 

We know that a meat diet tends to acidify the blood and that 
man's only defence against the attacks of disease is based upon 
the normal alkalinity of the blood. A. E. Wolff has analysed 
the flesh of beef, veal, and mutton to determine the average 
of alkalines and acids in one hundred parts of such flesh. Com- 
menting on Wolff's findings, Armond Gautier states: 

"In the ash of muscle, phosphoric acid is united to the extent 



334 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

of two-thirds to the potassium of the tissues. The other third, 
not rinding sufficient alkalinity to neutralise it, remains mostly 
acid. The sulphuric acid found in the tissues comes from the 
sulphur of the albuminoids. The destruction of meat in the 
body thus tends to acidify the blood both by mineral acids and or- 
ganic acids, which originate from the digestion and decompo- 
sition of meat. 

To render these acids harmless they must be neutralised in 
the body. 

In a meat and vegetable diet the vegetables furnish the al~ 
kalines necessary to neutralise these acids. 

Meat eaters should therefore always supplement their diet 
with plenty of fresh vegetables and should see to it that none 
of the alkaline juices of the vegetables are lost in cooking. 

But, in order to neutralise with vegetables the acids of meat, 
the kidneycide who eats twice as much meat as he ought to, 
would have to eat twice as many vegetables as he can hold. 
Thus far no surgeon has been able successfully to devise an 
operation that would enlarge the stomach to any such capacity. 

It is much easier to develop an enlarged cranium than to di- 
late a stomach ordinarily designed to hold a quart to a degree 
that will enable it to receive a peck. There is no questioning the 
fact that if we are going to go on in America with our present 
rate of meat consumption, we have simply got to get new stomachs. 

It might be possible at birth by a deft operation to substitute 
a calf's stomach for the human stomach in order to enlarge the 
human capacity, but to do so it would also be necessary to equip 
the body with a liver and two kidneys that would measure up in 
size to the increased demands made upon them. This would neces- 
sitate the extension of the entire abdominal cavity — a difficulty 
that might be overcome by grafting over the abdominal .surface of 
the infant fifteen or twenty square feet of cowhide. 

To support this rotund sack we might rig up some kind of 
a block and tackle which would enable the child as it grows 
to waddle along into adult life. 

The prospect is not promising, but it seems to be the only way 
out of our present difficulty. 

In the meantime the meat eater ought to consider certain 
facts which have no bearing on patriotism but which affect his 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 335 

own physical welfare to an extent rarely suspected by him. 

Wet, water- logged, soggy, soft, gelatinous, flabby meat is al- 
ways of poor quality as distinguished from good meat which has 
a healthy red colour, unless it be pork or veal, the colour of which 
is pale. 

To the touch good meat should be firm and elastic; not wet, 
but moist. 

Meat of a pale pinkish or bluish hue should be rejected as 
coming from diseased animals. Meat which has a deep purplish 
colour should also be rejected, for this colour indicates that the 
animal died a natural death — that it was not slaughtered. 

Meat which has a blazing red colour, instead of a dark, rich 
but dull red, has been treated with anhydrous sodium sulphite. 
Hamburg steak is the most abused in this regard. 

Tubercular meat is especially to be rejected. Animals suf- 
fering from tuberculosis do not always leave in their flesh symp- 
toms which can be detected by mere visual examination, although 
the marks appearing in the advanced stages of tuberculosis are 
unmistakable. 

Meat which discharges its juice on the platter in large quan- 
tities is frozen meat which has been thawed. Freshly killed or 
merely chilled meat is comparatively dry. 

In freezing meat for storage purposes the liquid constituents 
of the tissue cells expand just as water expands. The expan- 
sion ruptures the cell walls just as it ruptures a lead pipe. When 
the meat is thawed for sale by the retailer the cell juices flow 
through the broken tissues and escape. Frozen meat after thaw- 
ing putrifies rapidly. 

No meat should be consumed raw for the reason that it may 
not only infect its consumer with tuberculosis but also with 
trichinosis and other diseases. 

The heat ordinarily applied to a heavy roast does not steri- 
lise the lymphatic glands which lie imbedded in the flesh. If 
the animal is tubercular the glands are always affected even 
though no evidence of the disease is to be found in the tissues. 

In milk the germ of tuberculosis is killed when heated to 145 
degrees Fahrenheit for thirty minutes. This is called pasteur- 
isation. 

Meat, however, is a poor conductor of heat, and heat pene- 



336 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

trates to the centre of large pieces of meat very slowly. 

If the interior of a roast of beef retains much of the blood- 
red colour of the raw meat you can be sure that the temperature 
has not been high enough to destroy any germs that may be 
present. 

Dr. Woodland of the British Royal Commission subjected 
meats known to contain tubercular material to the ordinary pro- 
cesses of cooking. After cooking he used the central portions for 
feeding and inoculating animals. The results were startling. 

He found the centre of a joint weighing six pounds never 
attained a higher temperature than 140 degrees Fahrenheit dur- 
ing ordinary cooking. The germs on the outside were destroyed, 
but those on the inside remained alive. 

The results of his experiment prove that the most trustworthy 
method of cooking meat is by boiling. 

Mutton is probably more easily digested than beef because 
its fibres are much finer, and its connective tissues loose. Veal 
is thought to be difficult to digest, although its connective tissues 
are very loose and are readily converted into gelatine. 

In explanation of the belief that veal resists digestion it is 
said that the fibres of veal easily escape the action of the teeth 
and that because its flavour is insipid as compared to the flavour 
of other meats it fails to stimulate a liberal flow of the digestive 
juices. 

Pork is digested with great difficulty on account of its high 
fat content. It requires a much longer time to digest fat than to 
digest muscle fibre. Bacon is an exception to this rule as it can 
often be consumed without any ill effects by those who find diffi- 
culty in digesting other forms of fat. 

The breast of chicken and game is digested with more ease 
than any other form of meat. 

Lamb is probably the most wholesome of all meat foods for 
the reason that the sheep is found to be amazingly free of the 
diseases which affect such a large proportion of the steers and 
swine offered for slaughter. 

Beef tea is made by boiling the flesh of old cows, known in 
the packing industry as "canners" or "downers." 

The boiling extracts the soluble substances present in the 
tissues. The cast off cells of the old flesh and the waste products 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 337 

of its muscles are soluble in water, consequently they enter the 
extract. 

The insoluble waste which appears in solid form becomes 
"corned or canned roast beef." 

For myself I find that carefully selected meats do not harm me 
when consumed in moderation. Three or four times a week I 
eat meat. When I used to eat it three times a day I did not 
know what was the matter with my health, but now there is 
nothing the matter with it. 



§ 108 — OLD WHEN TIRED 

When we are tired we are old. Age might well be said to 
be a state of chronic fatigue. Even the very young suffer from 
fatigue and it is usually during fatigue, when the vitality is 
at low ebb and resistance weak, that the germs of disease be- 
gin their growth in the body. 

Youth suffers two kinds of fatigue — nervous fatigue and mus- 
cular fatigue. In either case the conditions may be brought 
about by overexertion or disease. The scientists call the former 
physiological fatigue and the latter pathological fatigue. These 
two forms of fatigue differ from one another only in degree. 

The sensations of fatigue, with all they signify, are of interest 
to a nation confronted by food problems because it has been 
established that certain kinds of food will produce the same 
chemical changes in the human tissues that are brought about 
by fatigue. 

Fatigue interferes with the activities of every gland of the 
body. Its principal effect is to destroy the capacity of muscle 
and nerve to perform the work natural to them. Its chief symp- 
tom is depression, and its chief effect the destruction of all those 
natural forces which tend to protect the body from disease. 

Because fatigue is so intimately related to food folly as well 
as to overexertion and disease its dangers should be clearly 
understood. 

Dr. Arthur L. Fisk has devoted, many years to the study of 
fatigue, examining its phenomena through the tired muscle. 



338 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

He informs us that, inasmuch as the muscles are more acces- 
sible for investigation and experiment than are the nerves, we 
necessarily know more of the fatigue of the muscle than of 
the nerves. 

"But," he says, "as the general law of biology applies to both 
muscle and nerve alike the processes which take place in the 
one doubtless occur similarly in the other." 

Until recently the fatigue of muscle which results from physi- 
cal exertion was thought to be a condition only of the muscle, 
but this is now known not to be the case. 

If a healthy fresh muscle of a frog's leg is placed upon a 
marble slab and stimulated with electricity it will contract in the 
same manner as it would have done in life and health. 

If these contractions are repeated in sufficiently rapid suc- 
cession certain chemical changes take place within the muscle 
tissue. During these changes there are formed in the tissues 
some of the same toxic substances which are formed in a one- 
sided diet of refined food. These substances are lactic acid, 
creatine, and carbon dioxide. An exclusive diet of white bread, 
meat and sugar produces the same tissue change as is pro- 
duced in fatigue. 

When these substances are developed in the muscle of the 
frog's leg it resists further contraction and can then be said to 
be in a state of fatigue. However, if these toxic substances 
are removed by flushing the tissues with a weak salt solution 
the muscle of the frog's leg will again contract when the elec- 
trical stimulus is applied. 

All these toxic products of fatigue are acid. During rest 
following fatigue these acids are neutralised by the alkalines 
of the blood and internal secretions, after which the muscle 
is restored to a state of freshness, strength and tone. 

If these corrective alkaline substances are removed by me- 
chanical processes from food before it is consumed the blood and 
other internal secretions which the body relies upon in health 
to counteract the poisonous effects of fatigue must necessarily 
be deprived of the tools with which they operate. 

Even an amateur can readily appreciate the fact that to the 
extent to which food refinement robs the daily diet of these 
corrective alkaline salts the body is correspondingly handicapped 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 339 

in its effort to overcome the evil effects of fatigue, from which 
complete receovery on a refined diet is absolutely impossible. 



§ 109 — FOOD AND FATIGUE 

To clearly understand the direct relationship between food 
and fatigue it will be well to examine the remarkable experi- 
ments of Weichardt, Ranke, Mosso and Lee. 

Weichardt took living animals which had been fatigued by 
their own exertions, cut from them pieces of muscle tissue, 
and recovered from this tissue poisons which could not be re- 
covered from healthy tissue in a state of rest. 

These poisons, taken from the fatigued muscle, were injected 
into the body of the rested animal, which soon after began 
to manifest all the symptoms of natural fatigue. 

This experiment proved that fatigue is produced by chemical 
changes of an acid character which take place in the tissues and 
that until these depressing acids are neutralised by the natural 
functions of a healthy body the poisons remain in the tissues. 

Ranke, convinced that the products, lactic acid, creatine, and 
carbon dioxide, developed by muscle activity, were responsible 
for the phenomenon of fatigue, experimented on frogs' muscles, 
into which he introduced these substances taken from the 
laboratory. 

He found, after injecting creatine and carbon dioxide into 
the muscle, that it lost its strength as well as its power to move. 

After proving this he gave the name of " fatigue substances" 
to creatine and carbon dioxide. 

Mosso, as a result of his study of fatigue, found it was due 
entirely to chemical changes within the muscle. 

Lee describes changes which he says result in the produc- 
tion of three acid substances which he calls sarcolactic acid, 
novopotassium phosphate, and carbon dioxide. 

All of these substances are acid in their reaction, which ac- 
counts for the acid reaction of a muscle in a condition of fatigue 
as distinguished from the reaction of a muscle in repose, which 
is alkaline. 



340 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

Until these acid products of fatigue are neutralised by the 
alkalinity of the healthy blood which passes through the tissues 
the fatigued muscle cannot recover its strength. 

The fact that the alkaline salts are removed from most of 
the foods served on the American dinner table has never been 
heeded by the medical profession as a body, although individual 
physicians in many parts of the country have in recent years 
recognised the truth and are applying it in their practice by 
prescribing unrefined foods in many diseases. 

Fisk declares: "Fatigue is the result of chemical changes 
which occur within the tissues and organs of the body and which 
give rise to certain toxic products that act to depress these 
tissues or organs. 

"Nerve tissue is no exception to the general biological law. 
Such changes occur in the nerves during activity as well as in 
the muscle tissue. 

"Intense mental activity is capable of giving rise within the 
body to these profound chemical changes as shown by the frequent 
occurrence of a nursing mother suffering an intense fright and, 
subsequent to it, nursing her baby, who within three or four 
hours thereafter has severe convulsions. 

"This also demonstrates," he says, "that the action of the 
fatigue poisons is not confined to the tissues in which they arise, 
but passes over to all the other glands and organs of the body 
affecting their secretions and functions. 

"The constitution of the blood is altered by the absorption 
of these acid products of fatigue, in consequence of which its 
alkalinity is greatly diminished, a condition which results in 
serious disorders. 

"Any activity on the part of a nerve or muscle that is already 
in a condition of fatigue results in decidedly more harm than 
would a heavier task done under normal conditions, so that when 
the body is fatigued even a small amount of extra work often 
produces disastrous results." 

The athlete generally recognises the importance of food of 
the proper kind in order to enable him to recover from the fa- 
tigue of his exertions. He instinctively recognises that if he can 
get his blood in a healthy condition through proper dieting he 
will more quickly overcome the depressing effects of fatigue 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 341 

and thus recuperate under strain in a more rapid manner. 

Without knowing why, he understands fully that if he can 
bring about in his blood a perfectly normal alkaline condition 
it will have capacity for neutralising larger quantities of the 
acids of fatigue, thus contributing to his endurance and en- 
abling him to outlast his opponent in a contest. 

The conditioning of all boxers and athletes is based upon 
the training table. 

Growing children, prospective mothers, nursing mothers, and 
bread-winners engaged in the ordinary exhausting pursuits of 
the day are just as dependent upon the application of these 
biological facts to their own physical welfare as is the boxer, 
but the importance of food is not recognised in the ordinary 
everyday walks of life. 



§ 110 — THE END OF FATIGUE 

Extreme fatigue, whether nervous or physical, produces a 
change in temper, causing irritability, and often overpowers the 
noblest qualities. 

There is scarcely a man, woman or child who does not daily 
suffer some manifestation of irritability which, if properly un- 
derstood, might be traced to its proper source and overcome. 

Impoverished food, through diminishing the alkalinity of the 
blood and thus reducing the capacity of that fluid to neutralise 
the poisonous acids of fatigue, has done much to upset the 
happiness of the human family. 

Incompatibility of temper is dragged into the divorce courts 
more often through the impoverished food route than through 
any other channel. 

The fretful, irritable child which occasions so much vexation 
and anxiety at home is the victim of much preventable suffer- 
ing only because it is reacting to the ignorance of those who 
have undertaken to supply its tissues with food incapable of 
contributing to their normal needs. 

Many a highly developed mind breaks down in the midst of 
its unfinished labours solely because with all its intelligence it 



342 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

still acts in the dark as regards the physical needs of the body 
which sustains it. 

The worn down business man crams himself with foods which 
no owner of a prize animal would permit in his kennel, stable, 
or stock farm. 

Fisk enumerates the order in which the functions of the 
body are affected in fatigue. He says, "We first find the circu- 
lation and respiration affected, then later digestion and then 
the action of the kidneys. In individuals of advanced years 
we have to deal with tissues in a condition of fatigue or de- 
pression due to the wear and tear which they have suffered 
during the stress of life in years that have passed. 

"The evidence of this fatigue is shown by what is usually 
called lowered vitality exhibited in poor circulation, deficient 
respiration, impaired digestion, and faulty action of the kidneys — 
processes which have to do with oxidation, assimilation, and 
elimination. Such individuals are in a condition of chronic fa- 
tigue, depression, or acidosis." 

This word "acidosis" persists throughout the literature of im- 
poverished foods. The sailors who were stricken aboard the 
converted cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm suffered from a condition 
of acidosis so similar to that of chronic fatigue that the symp- 
toms of both were identical. 

In their case an abundance of acid-producing foods so dimin- 
ished the alkalinity of their blood that their tissues were satu- 
rated with the acids of fatigue. They lost the power of locomo- 
tion. Their blood had been robbed of alkalines to such a de- 
gree that even the slight scratches upon their hands and feet 
refused to heal. 

Alkaline solutions quickly enabled them to neutralise these 
acid poisons and they promptly recovered. 

Describing the effects of fatigue upon the aged, Fisk says : 
"They increase the depression of acidosis of the tissues that 
exists and this increase overpowers the system with poisons so 
that death results." 

Foods which produce an acid reaction in the body must be 
consumed with foods which produce an alkaline reaction. 

Foods robbed of their alkaline salts cannot contribute this 
alkalinity to the blood. 



PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 343 

Blood robbed of its natural alkalinity cannot neutralise or 
correct the acid products of fatigue. 

The tissue sweeteners are the alkaline salts found in ripe fruits, 
succulent vegetables and greens, milk, egg yolk, beans, peas, 
lentils, whole wheat, whole corn, and other whole cereals. 



NINE: WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW 
OF THE MYSTERIES OF FOOD 



NINE: WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW OF THE 

MYSTERIES OF FOOD 

§ 111 IRON AND THE RAISIN 

The skin of anemic women is white. The flesh of anemic 
women is flabby. The muscles of anemic women lack tone. 
When iron is withdrawn from their blood the roses vanish from 
their cheeks. Cosmetics applied from the outside deceive neither 
God nor man. 

Iron deficiency as a disease baffles the medical profession. 
There are no whoops of joy, no outbursts of buoyant energy, 
no cries of bounding gladness, no hops, skips or jumps, no foun- 
tains of eternal youth, vigour, life or health in the bottle of "beef, 
iron and wine," or the jar of rouge. 

Tired and listless folk, with energising iron clamouring for 
recognition, fail to see it at their doors. 

Among the most prolific sources of food iron, the raisin is 
conspicuous. California might well be called the "Iron State" 
though never has she been so honored. Her fruity little nug- 
gets of iron are gathered from bounteous harvests only to be 
ignored by white-faced creatures, who mournfully cry, "Where 
are the iron men of yesterday?" 

The raisin, heavy with iron in its most assimilable form, 
begs mankind to let it do for the weak and the weary the things 
it was created for. 

Polar explorers with indomitable courage face the longest 
nights of the Arctic winter when iron props their strength. When 
the prop falls they yield tribute to misery and death, attended 
by anemia, scurvy and mineral starvation. 

No wonder the adventurer who pushes into the North places 
the raisin on the pinnacle of glory nature made for it. 

Lelensky fed dogs upon foods deprived of iron. Dogs can 
live on any food that will sustain a human being. In one dog 
thus fed on an ironless diet the percentage of the red colouring 

347 



348 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

matter of its blood fell in nine days from 18.5 to 13. 1 ; in another 
dog fed the same way the percentage dropped in six days from 
14.8 to 1 1.3. Anemia became more pronounced as the ironless 
diet was continued. 

California with her vast crop of raisins should know that 
the iron demanded by the body for oxidation, secretion, repro- 
duction and growth must be obtained from food iron not from 
medicinal iron. 

Because it contains an abundance of iron the raisin might 
well be chewed as gum or tobacco is chewed. It might well 
become a part of all our breadstuffs, cakes and muffins. It 
might well go with us into the hospital and the nursery. 

Soaked in water overnight and simmered gently for a few 
minutes in the morning, the raisin makes an ideal and easily 
digestible breakfast fruit. 

Like whole cereals it contains the mineral salts essential to 
life. Not only does it provide iron in abundance, but it yields 
in large measure lime, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. 

The raisin is a gift of God. Every athlete, every mother, 
every child, should cultivate the raisin habit. 

If we could increase the consumption of raisins a hundred- 
fold, much of the anemia due to our denatured foods would 
disappear. 

Come, California, give us raisins and more raisins, so that in 
the days of peace we may find argosies of iron-laden dried 
grapes ploughing their way over courses whose mistresses too 
long were iron ships of war. 



§ 112 — Cornell's o.k. 

Some little confirmation of the truths outlined here breaks 
forth occasionally in wholly unexpected fashion. 

In April, 191 7, the New York State College of Agriculture, 
Cornell University, issued a bulletin urging the people to consume 
generous quantities of milk, eggs, dried and fresh fruits, peas, 
beans, succulent vegetables, whole wheat, whole corn and whole 
rice in order to obtain the minerals necessary to health. 

"Green vegetables contain great quantities of iron, and iron," 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 349 



continued the bulletin, "enters into the composition of the cell 
nucleus and of that part of the red corpuscle which carries 

oxygen. ... , «< i 

"Iron is important for growth and for maintaining the blood 
in good condition. Children, young girls and^ women, expectant 
mothers especially, need a diet rich in iron." 

After outlining the necessity of iron, lime, phosphorus, po- 
tassium, magnesium, sodium and other food minerals, the bul- 
letin declared- "It is advisable to include in the daily dietary 
a certain amount of cellulose frequently called indigestible plant 

fibre or roughage." § . « 

Here at last, is university recognition of facts in the denial 
of which the food poisoners of America are more menacing 
from within than was the Kaiser from without. g 

Every day since 191 1 the New York Globe persevered in 
spreading this gospel, and every day until the Cornell bulletin 
appeared it was laughed at, as it has been laughed at ever since. 



§ 113— POTATOES, PARSNIPS, CARROTS, AND TURNIPS 

Among the best of the foods symbolic of mineral richness 
is the humble potato. The United States has never made full 
use of this naturally alkaline food. Our methods of preparing 
it have squandered its most desirable dietetic substance. 

Because the potato has been plentiful and comparatively cheap 
we have looked upon it as unimportant, yet Armand Gautier 
himself has no hesitancy in declaring that the potato, in addition 
to whole-grain bread and meat, is the most general and valuable 
aliment. Since it has become popular, famine has disappeared 

from Europe. , 

The small new potato differs little in composition from the 
fully developed potato. Because of its great richness in potas- 
sium, calcium, and magnesium, it does not acidify the blood 
as other starchy foods, but rather alkahses it. 

When peeled and cooked in water it loses most of these 
mineral salts, which pass into the water airfare not served at 
the table. Steamed in its skin the potato retains its full flavour, 






350 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

also its salts. Baked in its jacket it is ideal, provided the skin 
has been carefully washed and brushed before baking. Even 
the crisp skin when masticated will agree with nearly everybody — 
man, woman and child. 

Growing children and expectant mothers should not eat fried 
potatoes, nor should any adult in delicate health. 

Next to the potato in value as regards their alkaline influence 
on the blood, the carrot, turnip and parsnip are paramount. 

Tender, new carrots, steamed and served with butter sauce, 
cream sauce made of milk powder and their own juice, are not 
as popular in America as they should be. 

Turnips, steamed, mashed and seasoned, are likewise lacking 
in popularity. 

Parsnips lack the general recognition which their virtues merit. 
In the old-fashioned home these tubers are employed in soup 
making, thus contributing their alkalising juices to the dietary. 
They yield calcium in quantity almost as great as that afforded 
by the potato. 

The parsnip contains nearly twice as much calcium as the po- 
tato and in potassium salts is richer than carrot, turnip or potato. 
The parsnip also contains more phosphorus but less iron. The 
carrot and turnip contain less than half the iron found in the 
potato. 

A judicious combination of these tubers will bring to the 
dinner table such varying percentages of these alkaline salts 
that in the long run the general average of the combination might 
be said to be ideal. 

In proportion to cost the fruits and vegetables furnish much 
more iron than meat and fish. 

Sherman reports the cost of meat and fish is about 35 per 
cent, of the total expenditure for food and the cost of vegetables 
and fruits only 18 per cent., although the food iron of the vege- 
tables is incomparably superior to the mere traces of iron found 
in meat. 

Meat tends toward excessive intestinal putrefaction with result- 
ing absorption of poisons detrimental to the red blood cells 
and interfering with the economy of iron in the body. Fruits 
and vegetables on the other hand have the opposite effect, and 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 351 

their use in liberal quantities tends to prevent intestinal pu- 
trefaction. 

Herter shows that among anemic people the anemia is closely 
associated with intestinal putrefaction, and that an improved 
condition of the blood quickly follows upon the larger use of 
fruits and vegetables. 

He observes that anemia is much more common among meat- 
eating animals than among herbivorous animals. Not only are 
the salts contributed by the carrot, parsnip, turnip and potato 
of great aid in bringing up the blood to normal, thus fortifying 
the tissues against disease, but because of their bulky residue 
they produce a mild laxative effect which prevents the absorp- 
tion of putrefactive poisons in the intestines. 

In ancient times the carrot and turnip were held in great es- 
teem, and it is difficult to understand the reason for America's 
indifference to them. 

The Greeks and Romans boiled the carrot in a stew pan over 
a slow fire with cummin and a little oil, sprinkling the finished 
dish with ground cumminseeds before serving. 

The epicurians of Athens prepared turnips by boiling them, 
adding cummin, mashing in a mortar, then adding honey, grape 
vinegar, gravy, stewed grapes and a little oil. The whole was 
left to simmer and then served. 

The extensive cultivation of vacant lots, home gardens and 
truck gardens stimulated in America by the war, should never 
again be discontinued. We should eat more cabbage, spinach, 
lettuce, onions, leeks, radishes, parsley and cucumbers, except 
in the rare cases where the individual presents an idiosyncrasy 
against them. 

All these greens afford large percentages of potassium. The 
presence of potash (potassium carbonate) in the ashes of burned 
wood accounts for the fact that wood ashes are alkaline. It 
is for this reason they are used in sweetening sour or acid soil. 

The potassium salts of these green vegetables have the same 
effect exactly on the tissues of the body, keeping them sweet 
and alkaline. 

The eating of these vegetables actually diminishes the acidity 
of the urine, a fact demonstrated by Blatherwick, who found 
in all his experiments with vegetables that the urinary acidity 



352 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

— ----- - 

is diminished as expected, showing that the alkalinity of vege- 
table foods is actually utilised in neutralising the acids of the 
body. 

On this point Sherman is most explicit and emphatic. "It 
should be clearly understood," he says, "that an excess of base- 
forming elements in the food is not in any sense objectionable, 
since the oxidation processes in the body are constantly yielding 
such large quantities of carbonic acid that any surplus of base- 
forming elements goes to form bicarbonates which not only do 
not disturb the neutrality, but which act as a reserve material 
for its maintenance." 

It is obvious as all experiments attest that the greater the 
amount of meat, fish, eggs, sugar and starch consumed, the 
more important is a liberal supply of fruits and vegetables. As 
meat eaters we have run mad. Our vegetable appetite is far 
below normal. This lack of balance, even without white bread 
to contribute to it, is menacing the stamina of America. 



§ 114 — FRUIT 

When the Creator placed man in the garden of Eden, He 
commanded him to eat of the fruit it contained. 

From that time fruit has been mentioned incessantly in the 
history of nations. 

The American farmer frequently complains that he cannot 
obtain the cost of picking his fruit, nor the cost of a basket or 
crate in which to ship it to market. 

I have attended many legislative hearings in which these 
grievances have been aired. 

Fruit trees have been chopped down, the stumps removed, 
and the whole orchard given up to the cultivation of other crops 
because the people of the cities eat fruit so slowly that little 
room is made for new shipments, which must be sold for a song 
or allowed to rot on the ground. 

The United States produces an abundance of fruits of every 
kind, yet so strangely have the American people been weaned 
from their fruit appetites that they consume perhaps one-fifth 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 353 

of the total annual harvest. For this reason they pay fancy 
prices for such fruits as they do eat. 

If their fruit appetites were normal they would secure great 
quantities of fruit at much cheaper prices, and the fruit farmer 
who now barely ekes out a living from his labors, would be 
prosperous and happy. 

We know how Moses exempted from military service any one 
who had planted a vineyard, and how all fruit trees conferred the 
same privilege upon their owners. 

The heathen nations understood the importance of fruits. To 
make them sacred and thus augment their popularity, they in- 
vented gods and goddesses to look after them, such as Pomona, 
Vertumnus, Priapus. 

The sole care of these deities was to protect orchards from 
bad weather, insects and robbers. 

The fruit of the olive tree grew under the protection of Min- 
erva ; the date was consigned to the protection of the Muses ; 
the fig and grape were looked after by Bacchus. 

So greatly did the heathens venerate these two fruits that they 
elevated Bacchus to the level of their other gods. 

We have here an instance of a god receiving a promotion 
through the human appetite for figs and grapes. 

The Greeks always served two courses of fruits. The Romans 
always ate fruit for breakfast. The third course of their princi- 
pal meal consisted of an incredible profusion of the production of 
their own orchards. 

Rich patricians planted fruit trees on the summits of high 
towers, and on their house tops, thus dwelling always, as they 
thought, under the orchards and the protection of the god watch- 
ing over them. 

From Rome the modern method of canning California fruits 
in a thin sugar syrup was borrowed. The Romans immersed 
their fruit in honey for future use. In those days bees were 
cultivated with great care, and the Romans not only enjoyed 
the fruits of the orchard, but also the nectar of its blossoms. 

In all experiments conducted with gorillas, chimpanzees and 
other members of the monkey tribe, it has been found that these 
creatures thrive best on a fruit diet. The reason for this is not 
difficult to find, although certain groups of scientists have tried 



354 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

to prove that their own meat-eating grandparents descended 
from the fruit and vegetable-eating primates. 

The luscious flavour and tempting bouquet of ripe fruits 
stimulate appetite and excite the flow of gastric juices. Fruit 
juice is medicine. Fruit pulp is food. 

No pharmacist has ever compounded a nostrum which bears 
in curative properties the slightest resemblance to pure fruit 
juice. 

Perhaps if the fruit farmers of the United States were to 
organise themselves into an educational association, and by tax- 
ing their fruits a cent a basket, create a fund for the purpose 
of advertising the truth concerning the medicinal virtues of ripe 
fruit, they would no longer have occasion to complain of bad 
markets. Fruit juice has no calorie value. It is just good. 

The appetite for fruit is a natural one, and needs only to 
be restored. The coarser and grosser flavours of charred meats 
and heavy gravies have blunted the fine organs of taste, but down 
in the heart of man is an instinctive appreciation of the products 
of vine and tree which can never be entirely destroyed. 

Upon this foundation there can be built to the benefit of the 
people of America an edifice devoted to the improvement of pub- 
lic health by way of the dissemination of fruit truth. 

At the root of such truth lie the results of the work of Blunt, 
University of Chicago, and Otis, College of Emporia, Kansas. 

These laboratory workers were shocked to find that dietitians 
invariably compute the quantity of iron in the cooked food 
prescribed for their patients on the published percentages of 
iron in the raw food. All these published percentages of mineral 
salts in foodstuffs are determined from analyses of the raw 
product. 

Blunt and Otis, knowing that the soluble salts are lost in cook- 
ing, also knew that such loss would deprive the patient of a 
large quantity of the very elements for which the dietitians 
prescribed certain foods. 

Selecting iron as the subject for their tests, they found the 
average loss in boiling in the usual way for spinach was 43 per 
cent., for string beans 39 per cent., for navy beans 32 per cent., 
for peas 36 per cent., for potatoes 15 per cent. As this loss 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 355 

represented soluble iron it is probable that the remaining salt 
is not nearly so available for the uses of the body. 

The other salts are lost to a similar degree, hence all vege- 
tables which are boiled before serving, unless their juices are 
consumed as soup, make it necessary to consume more fruit, 
the juices of which are not usually poured down the waste pipe. 



§ 115 — SULPHUROUS ACID 

With the exception of prunes, currants and raisins, practically 
all dried fruit in America is outraged by treatment with sul- 
phurous acid. Even the Sultana or blond raisin is bleached. 
The dried apricot, dried apple, dried peach, dried pear, and 
the fancy dates and figs are bleached. Dried mushrooms, mar- 
aschino cherries, English walnuts and almonds are likewise sub- 
jected to the fumes of burning sulphur. 

New Orleans and Porto Rico molasses, no longer worthy of 
the name they bear, are doped with this chemical. White wines 
contain enormous quantities of sulphurous acid, the spiteful, 
biting, acrid flavour of which is dominant once the consumer's 
attention is drawn to it. 

Crystallised ginger root and candied fruit peels are treated iri 
the same manner. 

The enormous extent to which sulphurous acid and its salts 
are employed is not dreamed of by the plain people. 

For years the Bureau of Chemistry, Department of Agriculture, 
at Washington, and the dried fruit industry have fought each 
other to such lengths that scientists and lawyers engaged by 
both sides in a controversy the public has never heard of, have 
appeared in almost all the courts of the country for and against 
the sulphurous acid abuse. 

All efforts to reform the methods of preparation whereby 
brunette fruits are forced to appear under a blond exterior have 
been defeated by the food sophisticators. 

For eight years the Referee Board to whose hands the sul- 
phurous acid problem was referred for a decision, kept quiet while 



356 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

in the meantime the harvest of sulphured fruits increased 
enormously. 

In 1909 California alone produced 40,000,000 pounds of dried 
peaches, bleached with sulphurous acid. In 1914 this quantity 
had increased to 64,000,000 pounds. Eight years is a long time in 
which to determine whether a poison is a poison, while the public 
during the interim without its knowledge, goes on eating the 
red corpuscle-destroying food. 

The sulphur interests have been able to say to the United 
States Government "hands off." Through their influence at 
Washington they were able to keep the Referee Board in a 
state of silence. 

In the meantime Dr. J. C. Olsen, 191 1, through his experi- 
ments showed that sulphurous acid destroys the kidneys. April 
21, 1913, I urged the New York Department of Health, which 
has unlimited powers, to feed twenty orphan children daily with 
the same kind of sulphur-bleached dried fruit that twenty mil- 
lion other children in the United States are asked to eat. I 
suggested that if at the end of one year these twenty orphans 
should be found to be the victims of sulphurous acid poisoning, 
the Health Department would have justification for exercising 
its vast powers in the discouragement of the sulphite industry, 
and would doubtless be absolved of all charges of cruelty for 
having made the experiment. 

The suggestion was looked upon as "inhuman." The same 
timid souls who would not feed twenty orphans systematically 
with bleached fruits, were willing to stand by idle while twenty 
millions of other children were exposed to its perils. 

The Government itself as far back as November 22, 1907, in 
circular No. 37, declared: "Sulphurous acid in the food pro- 
duces serious disturbances of the metabolic functions. It adds 
an immense burden to the kidneys, which cannot result in any- 
thing but injury. It impoverishes the blood in respect to the 
number of red and white corpuscles. It is in every sense preju- 
dicial to health." 

Yet sulphurous acid is in greater use to-day than ever. 

The Food and Drug Laboratory of the University of Cali- 
fornia has openly criticised the government for its failure to act. 

In volume 13, Nos. 8 and 9 of the Pennsylvania Department 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD #57 

of Agriculture Bulletin, October, 191 5, Dr. M. E. Jaffa frankly 
asserts: "Up to date there has not been offered a process (ex- 
cept sun-drying) which can take the place of sulphuring, but 
grapes intended for human consumption should not be subjected 
to sulphur fumes as successful drying can be practised without 
the use of sulphur. 

"In the case of the apricot and peach the oxidation of the 
sulphurous compounds to sulphuric is slow. Samples of Thomp- 
son seedless grapes have been tested with the result that while 
the content of sulphurous acid was below the limit permitted by 
the government, the sulphuric acid approximated ten times as 
much. The same is true as regards the desiccated bleached po- 
tato. 

"The fruit grower tries to produce in his output a high degree 
of color. If the consumer did not demand intensely yellow 
fruit there would be no sale for it. Fruit is coloured by the 
grower so as to get a higher price for his goods. The grower 
is willing to put on the market a less highly colored product 
if the consumer will use it." 

In the meantime the people living in and around Salano County, 
California, produced evidence to show that the sulphurous acid 
or sulphur dioxide liberated by smelting plants not only destroys 
the vegetation of the surrounding country, but injures the health 
of man and beast. 

So poisonous is the bleaching agent used in the dried fruit 
industry that the commission reporting to the Bureau of Mines 
on its investigation made between June, 1913, and September, 
1914, declared that in the proportion of 35 parts to 1,000,000 
parts of air it is harmful to man, and that even 2 parts of the 
poisonous gas in 1,000,000 parts of air applied for four hours 
at one time, or for ten minutes a day, had such an injurious 
effect upon plant life that it actually decreased the yield of 
barley studied during the investigation. 

The lower courts enjoined the smelting company from doing 
further injury, and the Supreme Court, to which the case was 
carried, confirmed the order, yet the sulphuring of food goes on, 



358 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



§ 116 — "chops," waste and jelly 

In the production of sulphured dried apples "apple waste" 
and "apple chops" are obtained as by-products. 

The price of sulphured "chops" before the war ranged from 
75 cents to $2 a bag of ioo pounds. They are used in the man- 
ufacture of cheap mince meat for bakers' use, and for the pro- 
duction of apple pie filler for the same purpose. 

The price for "apple waste" before the war arranged from 6o 
cents to $1.25 a bag of 100 pounds. "Apple waste" is sold to 
jam and jelly manufacturers who boil it in a vat and then place 
the skins, cores and trimmings between filter cloths under a 
hydraulic press, to extract the juice. 

This juice, with 60 per cent, glucose, 10 per cent, cane sugar, 
sufficient phosphoric acid to insure jellying quality, and coal 
tar color, with the aid of a chemical preservative, becomes 
a handsome mess. It is sold in 3-pound wooden pails through 
the grocery store, and in 30-pound wooden pails through the 
wholesale bakers' supply houses. 

Let the housewife read the label. She will find there such 
phrases as "contains S0 2 ," "contains sulphur dioxide," "bleached 
with sulphur," etc. 

These same phrases will be found on the molasses barrels and 
the wooden boxes in which dried fruit is shipped in wholesale 
quantities. 

The grocer does not transfer the illuminating phrase to the 
paper bags in which he retails the bleached product. The baker 
does not transfer it to the pie or cake in which it appears. The 
confectioner does not label his candy accordingly. 

When the government demands the labelling of the product, 
the information is intended for the trade, and the consumer does 
not get it. But a committee of housewives can invade grocery 
store and bakery for the purpose of seeing for themselves what 
kind of labels appear on barrels, boxes, pails and jars, the 
contents of which are so fraudulently beautiful, so chemically 
jfalse. 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 359 

The investigation ordered by Commissioner of Immigration 
Caminetti into the Ellis Island scandal in 191 2 disclosed the 
fact that the pies forced upon the immigrants were composed 
as far as the filler was concerned, of sweetened, sulphured 
"apple chops." The pies were not labelled. 

Anhydrous sodium sulphite is used by butchers all over the 
country. I have traced tons of it into interstate commerce, and 
have caused the arrest of scores of butchers who secretly em- 
ployed it to give a fiery red colour to their stale meats, par- 
ticularly to hamburger steak made from trimmings. 

In the old days the juice of the sugar cane was clarified and 
evaporated in open kettles set directly over the fire. The whole- 
some and delicious by-product was called molasses. 

To-day the stuff called molasses is clarified by the use of 
sulphurous acid, which is subsequently neutralised by the addition 
of an alkali. In the process the fine flavour and aroma of the 
cane are greatly destroyed. 

In some factories the acid is introduced as the fumes of burning 
sulphur, in others in the form of acid sulphite of lime. Part 
of this sulphurous acid is eventually oxidised to sulphuric acid. 

As a result of the system now employed molasses contains 
little of the sugar of the cane, but it does contain enormous 
quantities of mineral scale, sulphates and sulphites. The whole- 
some and benevolent mineral salts of sugar cane as it comes 
from the field range in quantity up to 1 per cent. The raw 
juice as expressed from the cane contains much less than I 
per cent, of these mineral salts, but so unnatural is the quantity 
of chemical neutralisers employed as refining agents that the 
finished molasses contains as much as 10 per cent, of useless 
mineral mud. 

The food manufacturer takes the benevolent salts out of our 
food and then burdens it with enormous doses of minerals of 
a kind found in no food. 



§ 117 MOLASSES AND CANE SYRUP 

In the old days molasses was worthy of the name, but to-day, 
as we have seen, except for the inconsiderable quantities made 



360 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

by a few farmers for home use, open kettle molasses has dis- 
appeared from the market. 

Open kettle molasses is really not molasses at all; it is cane 
syrup. 

In November, 1917, the Penick & Ford Co., Ltd., of New 
Orleans, La., experimented with such cane syrup and produced 
some 40,000 gallons of an un juggled product, free from sul- 
phurous acid or any of its salts. 

In order to obtain a high price for inferior molasses, its manu- 
facturer always bleaches it and the broker is forced to bleach 
it again, by the addition of more sulphites. "Blanket" they 
call it in the trade. 

The Penick <& Ford Co., Ltd., was amazed to discover that 
instead of having to sell the unbleached product at a discount 
it actually commanded a premium. 

Early in 1918 at 17 Battery Place, the company's New York 
office, I tasted samples of this old-fashioned pure syrup, re- 
joicing over its flavour, its body and its colour. There it stood, 
an eloquent rebuke to the miserable commercial sophistries that 
have debauched the molasses industry these many years. 

Although technically such cane syrup is not molasses, it tastes 
like molasses, smells like molasses, looks like molasses and dif- 
fers from molasses only in that it is incomparably better. It 
is merely the boiled down juice of the cane, from which none 
of the crystallisable sugars have been extracted. 

Commercial molasses represents the liquid that remains after 
the extraction of the first, second and third crop of sugar and 
the addition of the chemicals necessary to the extraction, including 
sulphites. 

The stuff known as "first molasses" contains what is left of 
the cane syrup after a single crop of crystallisable sugar has 
been extracted. 

As a rule first molasses is "too good" to be sold to the retail 
grocer for distribution to the consumer, hence it is put through 
a second extracting process, which withdraws a second crop 
of sugar crystals. The robbed product is then called "second 
molasses," which contains very much less sugar and very much 
more mineral mud than "first molasses." 

With an eye to business the molasses manufacturer takes this 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 361 

"second molasses" and again treats it to recover all the crystal- 
lisable sugar it will yield. 

This product is known in the trade as "third molasses/' the 
kind usually sold to confectioners and bakers. 

The last product in the process of degeneration is called "black 
strap," the rank flavour of which must be diluted in the taffy 
factory and bake shops in order not to spoil the salable charac- 
ter of their finished luxuries. 

"Black strap" is a thick, viscous, black mass containing 10 
per cent, of inedible impurities consisting of gums, acids, amino 
compounds and other chemical residue, the conduct of which 
in the living bodies of children, when consumed regularly over 
a period of years, is utterly unknown to scientists. 

Pure cane syrup or even "first molasses" free from sulphur 
dioxide would be cheap at any price, but the people cannot buy 
the former at all, and do not know where to seek the latter. Our 
grandmothers made us swallow sulphur and molasses in the 
spring. That sulphur was harmless. Sulphurous acid and sul- 
phites are poisons. 

We now know that the housewife who sacrifices food value 
for ornamentation indulges in perilous extravagance. When 
her wheat is devitalised and bleached with nitrites, the finished 
accomplishment is no longer flour. 

The wondrously beautiful peacock is admired, but the flesh 
of the homely turkey is consumed. 

Chalky white bread is demanded, but dusky devil cake does 
not shock. 

The farmer never colours his wheat straw with coal tar 
green, but he asks that his manufactured jam be dyed a passionate 
red with gas house refuse. His butter, saturated with annatto 
or turmeric in a desperate effort to keep up appearances, has 
not the unassailable social standing of his white, creamy product. 

The meat of the ox freshly slaughtered is brownish red, yet 
the butcher is encouraged to substitute a scarlet hue with sul- 
phites, as if the poor beast had died of coal gas poisoning. 

The breast muscles of birds that use their wings are dark. 
The white breast meat of the chicken is in a lingering state of 
degeneration, caused by the time-unhonoured atrophy of disuse. 

Lazy people who sit in rocking chairs would make poor stew 



362 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

for cannibals, although their flesh would become paler and paler, 
whiter and whiter the longer they rock before going to the 
caldron. 

Coal is judged by its thermal heat units ; food by its appearance. 

We do not recoil from the homely brunette prune or the little 
darky raisin, but we yelp for the bleached blonds of the fruit 
world. 

The eye is pleased with stained glass, gaudy beads, flashy 
trinkets, but the old-fashioned, sun-dried apple, rusty brown, 
and the old-fashioned sun-dried peach and apricot, lacking in 
skin beauty, possess food value and flavour incomparably su- 
perior to their chemically educated cousins. 

All reforms have to begin somewhere. There is no time like 
now to begin this one. 



§ 118 — ROTS AND SPOTS 

It never occurs to the average housewife that it is possible 
to use rotten eggs for baking purposes. She does not know that 
the putrefactive odours of the "spot" egg are volatilised in the 
heat of the oven, and driven off, leaving no trace perceptible 
to the sense of smell in the finished cake. 

The baker is familiar with this phenomenon. I have caught 
many bakers in the act of using such eggs in the production 
of layer cake, sponge cake, and pound cake. 

In one interstate conspiracy case tried in the Federal District 
Court, Trenton, N. J., before Justice Relstab, in which I was 
used as a witness by the Department of Justice, seven convicted 
men left the court room on their journey to the penitentiary. 
Their offence lay in the use of rotten eggs in the production of 
pound cake sold through the 5 and 10 cent stores of New York 
City, 40,000 pounds a day. 

The quantity of rotten eggs available for baking purposes 
according to the Food Research Laboratory of the United States 
Department of Agriculture has a value of $50,000,000 annually. 
Armour & Company estimate the value at $90,000,000. 

I have caught Armour & Company in the act of selling rotten 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 363 

eggs to bakers at 3 cents a dozen, a crime against human decency 
for which this institution suffered conviction, but for which, 
unlike the other culprits convicted in Trenton, it was not sent 
to the penitentiary, paying a fine instead. 

During the fall every case of 30 dozen eggs shipped to the 
large cities yields an average of 18 eggs known as "crax," "dir- 
ties," "leakers," "rots and spots." 

The "spot" is the result of the action of putrefactive bacteria. 
The "light spot" of yesterday is the "heavy spot" of to-day; the 
"heavy spot" of to-day is the "rot" of to-morrow. 

The egg candler can see the contents of any egg and determine 
its exact character without breaking the shell. 

The light and medium "spots" after candling are broken into 
30-pound cans and delivered in the liquid state to bakers, or 
frozen for future use. 

"Spot" eggs, when poured through a sieve of fine mesh like 
ordinary window screen, leave a mass of putrid clots on the 
screen. Fresh eggs or sweet storage eggs pass freely through 
the screen. 

The "spot" collectors who prepare them for bakery use re- 
ceive on an average $3.75 per can of thirty pounds, or $12 per 
hundred pounds. Tanners can use such eggs but bakers pay 
a premium of $5 a hundred pounds over the tanner price. 

The good bacteria which appear in buttermilk and sauerkraut 
are not to be confused with the bad bacteria that produce putre- 
faction in eggs. Putrefactive bacteria produce toxic substances. 
In the baking process these bacteria are destroyed, but their 
dead bodies and the poisons produced by them prior to their 
death remain in the cake. 

Instinctively the human family abhors putridity of any kind. 
God has given man a nose, placing it on sentinel duty as near 
the mouth as possible. The nose detects evidence of putrefac- 
tion and warns the mouth against it. In the rotten egg cake the 
putrefaction is disguised, masked, camouflaged, and the nose, 
designed only for honest operations, fails to penetrate the fraud. 

The public has no suspicion of the magnitude of this unholy 
business. In the metropolitan district alone within a period of 
twenty-six months, 208 rotten egg bakers have been prosecuted 



364 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

and convicted. These prosecutions grew out of an intensive but 
wholly unconventional effort to check the abuse. 

In rounding up the offenders I was endowed with authority 
by the mayor of Newark, the mayor of Jersey City, the health 
commissioner of Hoboken, the mayor of Mount Vernon and 
the health commissioner of New Rochelle. The police com- 
missioner of Jersey City assigned eleven plain clothes men to 
help me and the New York Bureau of Municipal Research 
loaned me a score of assistants. 

The disclosures of this little army of amateurs finally com- 
pelled the New York City Health Department and the Federal 
Government to act, with results that unfortunately are confined 
to one district of one state. 

So few communities heed the rotten egg traffic that the men 
engaged in it actually defy detection. 

In August, 1916, James Foust, Food Commissioner Pennsyl- 
vania Department of Agriculture, appealed to William H. Wil- 
son, Director of Public Safety, and Francis S. Brown, Attorney 
General, for help in an effort to control the rotten egg business 
of his state. He complained of the secrecy practised by the 
rotten egg industry, its round-about methods, and the extraor- 
dinary precaution exercised to avoid suspicion. 

"We find it practically impossible," he admitted, "to prevent 
the use of rotten eggs in establishments where food products 
are prepared or manufactured, such as bakeshops and the like." 

This pathetic confession of inability to control the rotten egg 
industry in Pennsylvania ought to prove illuminating and sug- 
gestive to other food officials as well as to those communities 
that fail to provide adequate inspection. 

In the absence of efficient inspection the housewives themselves 
can make it impossible for any bakery to operate that does not 
invite day and night inspection by the consumer. 

The American housewife who orders her household supplies 
by telephone knows nothing of what is going on behind the 
scenes, and she never will know until she sallies forth in person 
to do her own marketing, exercising vigilance of a kind she has 
not dreamed of for many years. 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 



365 



§ 119 — BAKERY WONDERS 

The sum total of so-called "harmless" frauds to which the 
confectioner and baker have been educated by manufacturers and 
wholesale supply houses during the last twenty years, is now so 
great that it promises, if not checked, to leave nothing genuine 
in the industries which thrive upon them. 

Compounds of foodless character have one by one taken the 
place of the old-fashioned materials of known virtue. Their 
presence is successfully concealed behind flavours, fillers and dye 
stuffs. 

Prizes have been awarded by the manufacturers of patented 
compounds for the greatest number and variety of cakes pro- 
duced by a baker employing the patented articles with the least 
possible quantity of flour, eggs, butter and milk. The purpose 
of these contests is obviously to demonstrate that the more the 
baker develops into a scientist the less real food his product need 
contain. 

All the following bakers' and confectioners' products are now 
on sale in barrels, pails, kegs, bottles and boxes in every city in 
the United States: 



Piefiline 

Cakefiline 

Frostine 

Jellene 

Marshmallene 

Nuttene 

Doughnuttene 

Egolene 

Aggola Powder 

Aigo 

Allenegg 

Eggatine 

Eggless 

Eggola 

No-Egg 



Sa- Van-Egg 

Wizzola 

Yelco 

Icene 

Creamalene 

Tartfilene 

Butteral 

Stearic Acid 

Tallow 

Packing Stock 

Butyric Acid 

Butyric Ether 

Aluminum Sulphate 

Chocolate Brown 

Chocolate Black 



Bleached Shellac 
Avisol 
Nonparif 
Creamthick 
Chinese Albumen 
Frozen Spots 
No-Be 

Nitrite Flour 
Bleached Potato 

Starch 
Hydrogenated Oil 
Carpenters Glue 
Lamp Black 
Alkalised Casein 
Chops and Waste 



S66 



THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



Amyl Acetate 
Amyl Buterate 
Velanear 
Acetic Ether 
Benzoic Ether 
Formic Ether 
Nitrous Ether 
Oenanthic Ether 



Velanearic Efher 
Metal Salicilate 
Benzoic Acid 
Sodium Benzoate 
Sulphites 
Sulphurous Acid 
Phosphoric Acid 
Citric Acid 



Carmine 

Vanillin 

Coumarin 

Naphthol Yellow S 

Orange-I 

Erythrosin 

Ponceau 

Amaranth 



Egg- Yellow alone, for instance, is so powerful that a pinch 
covering the point of the small blade of a pocket knife will make 
a pound cake look like the incarnation of six eggs where no eggs 
are present. 

The same quantity will colour sufficient starch and glucose to 
make a filler for a half dozen lemon custard pies without the 
use of a single egg. 

Trade circles deny their commodities are employed to conceal 
inferiority. This defence never stands when a zealous official 
prosecutes. There are no prosecutions. 



§ 120 — SHORTENING WITH PETROLEUM 

In January, 1918, I located a number of bakers in New York 
and Brooklyn using as a shortening agent, in place of lard or 
butter, a product knows as S. W. Mineral Jelly, manufactured 
by the Valvoline Oil Company. This product physically and 
chemically resembled white vaseline, deodorised, but is manu- 
factured by a concern that has no relationship with the vaseline 
industry. 

Mineral jelly has its legitimate uses, but it is without food 
value. It is made from mineral oil. The odor and flavor of 
petroleum are removed. 

Gasoline is the first product of mineral oil refinement, then 
kerosene, then the lighter oils, then the heavy oils known as ma- 
chine oil and cylinder oil, then the heavy petroleum or crude 
petroleum. By distillation this product is converted into white 
mineral jelly. 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 867 

Possibly in all tragedy there is an element of humour. There 
are times when the ludicrous saves us from breaking under the 
weight of ignorance and barbarism which curses our children. 
Asking for bread we are told to eat cake. Thinking we are eat- 
ing a product containing butter, lard, margarine or vegetable fats 
we really consume without our knowledge, approval or consent 
the residuum of the gasoline industry. 

Bakers who employ these wonderful substances employ them in 
secret. They are not proud of them. They do not advertise them. 
Yet, these same bakers claim a share of what we foolishly in 
America call civilisation. 

Civilisation is not wealth, power, luxury, self-esteem; not 
social eminence, not flourishing art, not the culture of the saloon,, 
not the tread of mighty armies, not the wash of turbined fleets, 
not the accomplishments of industry. 

Civilisation is not a veneer. It radiates from the heart through 
flesh that feels all flesh its own. Its fruits are active solicitude 
for the distressed, the poor, the weak ones of society ; chivalrous 
devotion to woman, reverence of motherhood, love of children, 
sympathy with youth, indulgence for the old, abhorrence of 
special privilege, intolerance of all things narrow, secret, unfair, 
unclean ; hunger for truth, thirst for justice, zeal for the common- 
wealth, passion for true liberty, inspired by democratic conscious- 
ness of inalienable rights, but bound by an equally imperious re- 
minder of obligations and duties, loathing license, hating religious 
bigotry, scorning racial prejudice. 

Civilisation means readiness to sacrifice self for the unborn, 
even as the millions who have died on the Western front have 
sacrificed themselves. 

Civilisation flows from faith in God. 

Can we in America attain this ideal? Perhaps, if we begin 
with our duty to the child. 

Our boys who have fought and died have attained it. They 
did not die for self. For them the world's lights were ex- 
tinguished, the world's voices hushed, the world's hand with- 
drawn. 

If the giving of their lives was worth while it was not worth 
while for self, for self ended in the giving. They went to 



368 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

slaughter not as cattle are driven from the pen to the killing bed, 
but with souls aflame. 

They knew when that thing we call the "End" stalked up to 
them it had been misnamed. With blurred vision they recognised 
it as the Beginning. They knew they had souls. We know that, 
too. 

How, then, shall we tolerate the soulless things through which, 
for the material profit of a few, our children crawl ? 



§ 121 — LABELS AND STANDARDS 

The people of America need food standards that will really 
standardise. The wholesale jobbing trade have adopted stand- 
ards as a commercial check against fraud, but the consumer is 
not considered in their application. 

In a few cities milk is no longer just milk ; it is Grade A milk, 
Grade B milk, or Grade C milk. Cheese is no longer "full 
cream" cheese. It is now whole milk cheese or skim milk 
cheese. 

With these two exceptions the housewife has no means of 
knowing the quality, character or purity of the product pur- 
chased by her, all the food laws notwithstanding. Even the 
cheese standard does not tell her whether the milk entering it 
was clean or dirty. 

The honest cheese maker who screens his windows to keep out 
flies, and who pays a premium for clean milk, has no advantage 
over his indecent competitor. Indecency is encouraged because it 
can show a larger profit in competition with decency. 

Bread surely should be standardised. Some bakers use lard, 
some use compound, others use ill-smelling fats, rescued from 
ignominy by heroic processes. The baker who uses pure short- 
ening enjoys no commercial advantage over his neighbour using 
imitations. 

A label adequately describing some of the loaves now on sale 
would inspire as much mirth as a Charlie Chaplin picture. The 
following cake label illustrates the point : 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 369 



THIS CAKE 

contains 

Wheat Flour, Corn Syrup, 

Uncertified Casein, 

Chinese Egg Albumen, Egg-o-Sub, 

Coal Tar Yellow, Alum, Sugar, 

Coumarin, Vanillin, Tonca, 

Water, Compound 

If the cake contained a filler between the layers it would carry 
another label like this: 

OUR FILLERS 

contain 

Glucose, Sugar, Coal Tar Red 

Chop, Skin and Core Juice 

Phosphoric Acid, Sodium Benzoate 

Pies under a standard system would be curiously labelled. 

In New York City mince meat is made for mince pies from 
horse meat. The meat of a young healthy horse would not be 
objectionable, but a young healthy horse is worth on the hoof 
at least $150 so that its dressed meat would cost at wholesale 
60 cents a pound. 

There is no such thing as horse meat ; it is really nag meat. 
Broken down nags are purchasable at from ten to twenty-five 
dollars each. Their flesh should lead to this label : 

MINCED NAG PIE 
Crust Shortened with Petroleum 

In Missouri the use of alum is unlawful in food products; 
elsewhere it is extensively honored. 

In Wisconsin the adulteration of food is not a misdemeanour, 
and no penalty can be collected for a first offence. 

In Minnesota no man has a constitutional right to keep secret 
the composition of substances sold by him as food. 

In the trade coal tar dye is known as "egg color," "tomato 
red," "strawberry red," etc. 

In bonbons the use of dye is ornamental. In orangeade, 
strawberry soda, raspberry soda, fruit icings, cakes, jams, jellies, 
pie fillers, tomato soup, macaroni, ice cream, smoked fish, cor- 



370 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 






dials, syrups, fruit juices, catsup and chili sauce it disguises 
inferiority and fraud. 

Catsup made of sweet potatoes, pumpkins and other gourds 
has enjoyed a large sale by reason of "tomato red. ,, 

The grocers "best" pumpkin may be any one of the wholesale 
standards, "Fancy Golden," "Extra," "Choice," or "Good." 

The grocer who sells "Good" as his best makes three times as 
much profit as the grocer who sells "Fancy Golden" as his 
best. 

The housewife under present conditions does not know what 
the grocer knows, wherefore her ignorance can be juggled by 
trickery or protected by honesty, and she will never know. 

John Philips Street, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment 
Station, reporting to the governor on twenty-three samples of 
canned pumpkin, found they ranged from forty-one cents to 
$1.28 a pound. 

When the housewife asks the grocer to send her a can of 
peaches she usually says, "Send me a can of your best peaches." 
She does not know that there are "Extra Regulars," "Extras," 
"Extra Standards," "Standards," and "Pies." She knows noth- 
ing of the density of the syrup or whether the peaches are 
Melbas, Yellow Clings, Yellow Frees, Extra White Clings, Extra 
White Heaths, Extra Yellow Crawf ords, Extra Standard Yellow 
^Clings or Second Yellows. The labels are mum. 

The grocer knows because he pays a different price for each. 
•One standard costs the grocer a dollar a dozen less than an- 
other. Because the standards are not passed on to the house- 
wife she knows nothing of the difference between the cheaper 
grades and the better grades, and so is easily misled through 
"bargains." 

All canned peas are peas, but the grocer buys them from the 
wholesaler as "Double Extras," "Extra Sifted," "Sifted," 
"Standards," "Soaks." 

The law standardises gold so that we have 24 carets, 18 carets, 
14 carets, and 10 carets, but canned tomatoes are simply toma- 
toes, though they may be "Fancy Red," "Hand-picked," "Fancy 
Hand-picked," "Whole Solids," "Regular," "Extra Quality," 
"Choice," "Standard," or just "Good." 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 371 

Canned corn may be "Fancy Maine," "Fancy Choice," "Maine 
Style," "Maryland," or just "Corn." 

The whole canned food family, from salmon to plum pudding, 
runs through a wonderfully complex system of trade standards, 
but leaves the housewife, always in the dark. Does she not want 
light? 



§ 122 — STANDARDS AND LABELS 

Butter is wholly standardised as far as the wholesaler is con- 
cerned, and for each standard the retailer pays a different price, 
but usually the housewife has a choice of only two grades, butter 
and best butter. 

The real standards are as follows : 

Extra creamery Renovated extras 

Creamery firsts Renovated firsts 

Creamery under-firsts Renovated lower grades 

Creamery top-seconds Ladles firsts 

Creamery seconds Ladles seconds 

Creamery thirds Ladles lower grades 

State dairy, finest Packing stock No. I 

State dairy, good to prime Packing stock No. 2 

State dairy, common to fair Packing stock lower grades 

This is why one grocer's worst butter may be another grocer's 
best and so on through a labyrinth of trickery for which the 
housewife in dismal ignorance pays the bill. 

The most hopelessly unstandardised compound now to be seen 
in America is labelled "ice cream." Ice cream contains all the 
way from 2 per cent, fat to 14 per cent. This fat may consist 
of any fat, including cream. 

The ice cream maker to-day uses a homogeniser with which 
he incorporates lard, cocoanut fat or any form of animal or 
vegetable compound with skim milk powder and water, or sweet 
skim milk. 

All commercial ice cream contains a bodifier, usually in the 
form of glue. Imitation flavors and colors add to its mystery, 



372 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

- 

Honest ice cream made of Grade A whole milk, pasteurised, and 
so labelled, ought some day to establish the reputation of an 
honest man. 

Why are there no standards to enlighten the housewife? In 
the first place until recently she had no vote. The political rep- 
resentatives of the food fakers did not consider her. They 
never will consider her until she serves notice that she is no 
longer ignorant of the subject of foods. 



§ 123 — CHEATING CATTLE 

Millions of dollars are stolen annually from the farmer by 
manufacturers of dairy feed known as "balanced rations." 

The adulteration of these feeding stuffs has grown constantly 
during the last twenty years. In the Fall of 1918 there were in 
New York State alone 1,760 separate and distinct brands of 
"mixed" feeds. The feed manufacturers had so monopolised the 
raw material, and had so dominated public officials, that the 
farmer found himself wholly unable to purchase straight feeds. 
He was obliged to buy them already compounded, notwithstand- • 
ing the frequent exposure of the frauds they concealed. 

The cost of producing milk, butter, cheese, eggs, poultry and 
beef have tremendously increased through the widespread distri- 
bution of these copyrighted "balanced rations," so many of 
which are actually worthless. 

Despite this fact the officials, controlled by the manufac- 
turers, have continued to ignore the shameful system although 
professing friendship for the farmer and consumer when seek- 
ing votes. They have known the truth ; no defence of ignorance 
can excuse their failure to interfere with this nation-wide system 
of thievery. 

In 191 1 Dr. W. H. Jordan, director New York Agricultural 
Experiment Station, exposed the methods employed to conceal 
refuse by saturating it with molasses in the production of "bal- 
anced rations." 

After describing the worthlessness of these adulterated feeds 
he. informed the manufacturers that he was "utterly, out and out, 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 373 

the enemy, here and everywhere, of the worthless stuff entering 
into compounded feeds." 

In 1916 the Wicks Investigating Committee examined Dr. Jor- 
dan, obtaining from him further information concerning the 
fraudulent character of these adulterated feeds as revealed by 
long, continuous analyses in the New York State Laboratory, 
Geneva Experiment Station. 

These exposures were recorded for the benefit of all state 
and federal officials in Flour and Feed, page 34, December, 
191 1, and in the Wicks Committee Official Report, page 784, 
1916. 

The official analyses showed that the feeds included ground 
corn cob, oat hulls, screenings, oat clippings, elevator sweepings, 
shredded straw, peanut hulls, sawdust, weed seeds, dirt and sand, 
to the extent of 50 per cent. 

"The dairymen should avoid these prepared feeds," declared 
Dr. Jordan. "The molasses feeds have lent themselves to this 
sort of mixing because the molasses obscures the mixture. The 
oat refuse is worthless. It has no more feeding value than the 
straw refuse around the barn! Under the present law the 
manufacturer can put anything he wants to into these feeds, the 
price of which is actually higher than the market value of the 
ground grain which the farmer cannot now buy from the miller 
to mix for himself." 

In 19 12 the State of Indiana published an official analysis of 
"oat feeds" in contrast with oats. Oat groats, for instance, were 
found to contain fibre 1.97, ash 2.10 (normal and good), whereas 
oat straw contained 37 per cent, fibre and 5 per cent, ash; oat 
hulls 29.7 fibre and 6.7 ash; oat clippings 22.15 fi° re an d 15 per 
cent, ash (abnormal and bad). 

The average of the mixed oat feeds examined disclosed the 
presence of 25.35 fi° re and 6.56 ash, a total of 33 per cent, 
waste. 

Dairy feed, containing this stuff, consists chiefly of wood and 
ash, mixed with black strap, the lowest by-product masquerading 
under the name of molasses. This black strap contains an addi- 
tional 10 per cent, of ash, consisting of scale and the mineral 
residue of the chemical processes employed in the refining of 



374 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

sugar. Thus the percentage of inert waste matter is pushed still 
higher. 

Notwithstanding the agitation against the use of these indiges- 
tible and non-nutritious feeds, Dr. J. K. Haywood, U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, assured the feed manufacturers, 1913, that 
it was no longer necessary to go to court to settle differences. 
(See Flour and Feed, December, 1913, page 60.) 

The same year G. A. Chapman, president of a feed manu- 
facturing concern, who in 191 8 became head of the Feed Division 
of the U. S. Food Administration, said: "We feed manufac- 
turers do not want to sell for less than we can get for our stuff." 
(See Flour and Feed, December, 191 3, page 31.) This state- 
ment fairly reflects the attitude of the mixed feed crowd toward 
the farmer. 

The same year Dr. Haywood, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 
sitting with the feed manufacturers, moved the adoption of the 
phrase "corn gluten feed" to cover the stuff known as "corn 
starch bi-product with corn bran," urging that the word "refuse" 
be dropped in describing chaff, empty hulls, immature oats and 
dust. (See Flour and Feed, December, 1913, page 35.) 

The worthlessness of ground corn cob and rice hulls had 
become so generally recognised by 1914 that June 1st of that year 
State Commissioner of Agriculture Page prohibited their mixture 
in compound feeds sold in Arkansas. The government did not 
follow. Why ? 

The same year Dr. James W. Kellogg, chief chemist Penn- 
sylvania Department of Agriculture, reported on 600 samples 
of feed analysed by him. Fifty of the molasses feeds contained 
water to the extent of 20.24 per cent. He demonstrated that a 
single car of 20 tons of such feeds contains 3 tons of water. 
For this water the farmer in 1918 paid $60 a ton. He also paid 
the same price for the indigestible wood-fibre, scale, weeds, sand 
and refuse concealed in the only stuff he could buy. 

By 1916 the New York State Feed Dealers' Association af- 
filiated with the American Feed Manufacturers' Association, had 
become so bold in boycotting millers who dared sell unmixed 
feeding stuffs direct to the farmer that the attorney general, 
forced by the disclosures of the Wicks Investigating Committee, 
threatened prosecution. 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 375 

To avoid prosecution the Feed Dealers' Association dissolved 
but immediately reformed under another name with the same 
members and the same officials. 

Throughout all these years there have been no prosecutions. 
Apparently the farmer will always have to act for himself. He 
knows, or should know, that oat hulls, the outside shell which 
acts as a protecting overcoat for the grain within, whether it be 
oats, rice, wheat, barley or corn, are not in any manner similar 
to the sweet, tender, inner skin of the grain known as "bran." 

Bran is essential to the health of dairy cattle as well as to the 
health of man. Hulls are essential only to the profit of the feed 
manufacturer. 



§ 124 — PASTEUR AND GOD 

The handicaps of ignorance under which our grandfathers 
struggled, suffered and died, have been lifted from modern life 
through the application of many scientific discoveries, beginning 
with the achievement of that most brilliant, unselfish and ideal- 
istic of earth's benefactors, Louis Pasteur. 

One does not have to go back fifty years to witness the typhoid 
epidemics that swept helpless communities to the grave. Yellow 
fever counted its victims by the thousands. Smallpox kept pace 
with this dread disease as a slaughterer of men. 

Surgery knew nothing of antisepsis. Gangrene, blood poison- 
ing and tetanus fought for the lives of those who were cut, 
mangled or bruised. Convulsions of infants with cholera- 
infantum destroyed hundreds of thousands. Child-bed fever, due 
to the ignorance of the medical world, was the nightmare of every 
physician. 

It was not so long ago that piles of garbage, filth and decay 
were to be seen lying about in the camps, hamlets, villages, towns 
and cities of the nation. To-day every town has its health of- 
ficer, every city its health department. 

As much money is spent on public health in the United States 
as upon education. We control the sanitary conditions of floating 
baths, stationary pools, bathing beaches; we operate day nur- 



376 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

series ; we promote the progress of industrial hygiene, regulating 
public laundries, disinfecting passenger cars and omnibuses, re- 
quiring the removal of harmful gases from work rooms. We 
compel the owners of marsh lands and sunken lots to fill in or 
drain them, to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes. 

We look after the sanitation and ventilation of theatres, and 
oblige physicians to report occupational diseases and injuries. 

We prevent persons suffering from communicable diseases 
from working in their homes on articles intended for general con- 
sumption. 

We regulate the free distribution of vaccines, antitoxins, 
serums and cultures. 

We conduct contagious disease hospitals and tuberculosis 
clinics. 

We inspect slaughterhouses and control the disposal of their 
offal. 

We condemn the use of the common drinking cup and the 
common towel. 

Until Louis Pasteur arrived our ignorance was abysmal. He 
taught us the relationship of micro-organisms to disease. He 
unfolded for us the mysteries of fermentation, decomposition 
and putrefaction. His discoveries now permeate every province 
of practical life. 

Until he came the world knew nothing of the complications 
of elemental reaction; of the growth and diseases of plants, 
of the nutritional and pathological processes of animals, of the 
canning, drying, refrigerating and spoiling of food, of the treat- 
ment of water supplies, of the disposal of sewage, of the manu- 
facture of vaccines and serums. 

Prior to the birth of this God-sent messenger there was no 
guiding hand to lead the way out of the wilderness of disease. 
Wine soured; silk worms died; food rotted; children perished; 
anthrax killed cattle; men succumbed to rabies; until Pasteur, 
with an almost intuitive insight into the operations of nature, 
gave to the world his knowledge of micro-organisms. 

Cow's milk could not then be made safe, as it is now made 
safe, thanks to Pasteur, in a few cities like New York, Chicago 
and Washington. 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 377 

Klein, inspired by Pasteur, had not yet wrestled with the fact 
that diphtheria is communicated through milk. 

Koch had not yet discovered tuberculin. The toxic sub- 
stances which microbial life produce, extending to the poison- 
ing of food through decomposition, were not even hinted at in 
dreams. 

Prior to the war, 1914, the terrors of the European herdsmen 
had been put to sleep. All these forces, glorified still further 
by the introduction of Lister's aseptic and antiseptic surgery, have 
fought death with a conquering hand. Infectious diseases no 
longer scourge the world. Yet — it was only in the early 
"eighties" that they were traced to their origin ; the organisms re- 
sponsible for them isolated and studied in the light of prophy- 
laxis. 

Medicine in these few short years has grown out of an 
ignorant mysticism into a science, and public health has become a 
tangible reality. We even boast of a serum therapy for hog 
cholera and a vaccine for black leg. 

Yet, notwithstanding the genius of Pasteur, who fought to 
preserve the life of man, many diseases are on the rapid in- 
crease. 

In the past fifteen years typhoid has been reduced from 32.0 
to 17.9, diphtheria from 29.6 to 18.8, but cancer has increased 
in the same time from 67.9 to 78.9; diabetes from 11.5 to 15.3; 
heart disease from 124.2 to 138.6; ulcer of the stomach from 
2.9 to 4.0 ; Bright's disease from 87.4 to 92.5. 

Why do these diseases increase? Alas, Pasteur, the idealist, 
who refused to profit commercially through his genius, who 
worked alone for God and man, who made no retort when the 
German scientists who afterwards established Pasteur Institutes 
in his honour, mocked him, flaunted him and sneered at him, is 
dead, and the scientific world to-day, profiting by all his achieve- 
ments, stands in humiliation as unbridled disease laughingly 
gallops before their eyes in its ride to death. 

As if looking into the future at those dreadful years, 1914- 
1918, Pasteur, in 1889, at the dedication of the Pasteur Institute, 
said: "Two opposing laws seem to be now in contest. The 
one, a law of blood and death, opening out each day new modes 
of destruction, forces nations to be always ready for battle. The 



378 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

other, a law of peace, work and health, whose only aim is to 
deliver man from the calamities which beset him. The one seeks 
violent conquests, the other the relief of mankind. The one 
places a single life above all victories, the other sacrifices mil- 
lions to the ambitions of a single individual. The law of which 
we are the instruments, strives even through the carnage to cure 
the wounds due to the law of war. Which of these two laws 
will prevail, God only knows. But of this we may be sure, that 
science, in obeying the law of humanity, will always labor to 
enlarge the frontiers of life." 

This great Pasteur knew nothing of the forces of the soil that 
step upward to the higher life of vegetation and then on into that 
loftiest triumph of physical creation, the flesh of man, contribut- 
ing their energies even beyond the flesh, which is but an instru- 
ment of the soul, but he did know the soul and its relation to its 
Maker. 

"Happy the man," he wrote, "who bears with him a divinity, an 
ideal of beauty and obeys it ; an ideal of art, an ideal of science, 
an ideal of country, an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel." 

Above his tomb in the Institute Pasteur these words are 
graven. 

It was Pasteur who wrote : "These are the living springs of 
great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the 
reflection from the Infinite. The more I know the more nearly 
is my faith that of the Breton peasant. If I could know all I 
would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman." 

He could not understand the failure of scientists to recognise 
the manifestations of God that lie everywhere in the world 
around us. Because he thought that his work was like that of 
St. Vincent de Paul, who did so much for suffering children, 
he asked upon his death-bed that the life of the saint be read to 
him. 

He, the believer in God, whom pagan science deifies as it has 
deified no other human genius, could see God in the laws of 
life. 

His benefactions emerged from his spiritual vision. 

To-day, in spite of his science, death continues to reap its 
harvest, because his successors have not only stopped where he 
left off, but in their pride have dismissed God from their equa- 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 379 

tions, smiling when Pasteur is devoutly described as "a child of 
God." 

If modern science would bow its head it would ask these 
questions : "With epidemics stamped out, why do we point with 
pride at the mortality records of the present day, when they 
disclose to us that in spite of all our wisdom, in spite of the 
army of public health workers who devote their lives to the 
control of disease, we permit the deaths of 400,000 children 
under ten years of age in the United States every year? 

"Why are diabetes, Bright's disease, appendicitis, cancer of 
the stomach, heart disease, constantly increasing, when Pasteur, 
the author of our glories, placed in our hands the weapons 
that conquer death? 

"Why do tuberculosis, malnutrition, anemia, nervous prostra- 
tion and constipation still destroy hundreds of thousands an- 
nually ? 

"What would have been the vigor of our grandfathers had they 
possessed the scientific knowledge that Pasteur placed at our 
disposal ? 

"In their day man's food was not denatured. 

"With all the influence now at work in his behalf, what would 
be the effect upon his health if it were not denatured to-day? 

"In giving man his food, is it possible that God prescribed? 
Why, then, do we tolerate the distortion of His prescription? 

"Shall we go on, baffled in our wisdom, or like that child of 
Faith, Pasteur, shall we journey back to God?" 



§ 125 WHENCE CAME LIFE? 

Evolutionists have pretended to trace the origin of man to the 
monkey by way of a "missing link," no trace of which, in spite 
of never-ending search, has yet been found outside the imagina- 
tion of a solitary group of theorists. 

From the monkey ever downward they journey into succes- 
sively lower circles of life, passing through countless thousands 
of years until they reach the tadpole stage. 

Still lower they descend into the dim realms of an unrecorded 



380 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

history, reaching at last a single cell of living protoplasm, the 
Beginning of Life on Earth. 

There they stop! 

How did that protoplasm, the source of all life on this planet, 
as they contend, get here? 

Pasteur saved millions of lives by demonstrating that "spon- 
taneous generation" does not take place. What then, if it did 
not generate itself, can they say to explain the presence of 
protoplasm as the first link in their chain of life ? 

They are certain they have found the first link even though at 
the centre of their chain a missing link breaks the circle. 
Protoplasm! How came it to earth? 

"Ah," they explain, "protoplasm originally immigrated from 
interplanetary space, after floating through starry regions per- 
haps for ages. Arriving at last, free and unincluded, upon the 
surface of the earth it found conditions accidentally favourable 
for its development and entered at once into that vast series of 
overlapping cycles whose glory is now manifested through mil- 
lions of living creatures ranging in dignity from the protoplasmic 
cell in the belly of a jelly fish to a Woodrow Wilson or a 
Ferdinand Foch." 

Loath to credit God with creation they choose rather to spin 
their tenuous filaments of hypothesis, until the thin web of 
speculation, hanging from supports of thinner nothingness, will 
no longer sustain the mote out of which are ravelled endless 
reams of biologic despair. 

Rent after rent and tear after tear have ripped the reaches 
of their scientific gossamer until now its tattered remains are 
less visible than the skeletal fragments of the "missing link," of 
which not a single vertebra has yet been found. 

In the year 191 1, Truth tore another gap in the shreds and 
patches still fluttering in the winds of pagan unrest. B. S. Shat- 
tock and L. S. Dudgeon reported the results of experiments con- 
ducted to ascertain whether nonsporing bacteria, dried in a 
vacuum and kept there would survive those dried in air, or die 
more quickly. 

They tested the action of sunlight, of heat and of cold, upon 
bacteria dried in an airless space in order to learn how far such 
solar and interplanetary conditions might be deadly to dried bac- 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 381 

teria, if such bacteria could be supposed present in a free state 
beyond the limits of terrestrial atmosphere. 

The Bacillus coli died on the fourth day both in vacuum and 
in air. The solar light and ultra-violet rays were fatal to these 
organisms in less than one hundred hours. 

The Bacillus typhosus perished almost as rapidly. 

The Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus survived from four to fif- 
teen weeks, then died. 

The Bacillus pyocyaneus was killed by exposure to bright 
sunlight in a vacuum in six hours. Nothing living can remain 
alive in the vacuum of sunlit space. 

Science knows at last that dry bacteria, even if free to wan- 
der through the interplanetary vacuum, could not survive the 
solar rays. While journeying earthward (by any conceivable or 
inconceivable medium) through hundreds of millions of miles 
of vacuum separating planet from planet, they would be killed, 
if such a thing were possible, a hundred times over. 

As Sir James Dewar's experiments have demonstrated that the 
ultra-violet rays will kill undried bacteria while frozen, at the 
temperature of liquid air, what becomes of the hypothesis that 
living protoplasm on the earth originally immigrated from the 
heavens? Dried or undried, in vacuum or in air, in heat or in 
cold, sunlight is fatal to the lowest forms of life and vacuum 
alone kills all its higher forms. 

The earth was once a flaming sun in which no organic life 
of any form could exist. When it cooled sufficiently, passing 
from the gaseous to the solid state, conditions favourable to the 
support of life were developed. 

Then life appeared. How did it appear? 

The assumption that a wandering cell drifted from star to 
earth breaks down when it is seen that such cell could not have 
arrived in a living state, if it could have arrived at all. 

But — though it could have found a sun-proof shield to protect 
it from the solar shafts and some other device for resisting the 
attack of the celestial vacuum how came it originally to the star 
from whence it migrated to earth? That star too, was once a 
flaming sun, an incandescent incinerator, a steriliser of life. 

The answer is : "Spontaneous generation" has died a scientific 
death. Pasteur pasteurised the lie. 



382 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

"Interplanetary migration" has died a scientific death, shat- 
tockised, dudgeonised and dewarised. 

Even if protoplasmic life existed among the stars it had to be 
placed there, but under no conditions could it come away. 

With drifting immigration and self-creation gone, to whom 
shall the scientist go to explain his protoplasmic life if not to 
God? All else has failed him. To be satisfied with failure is 
Death. 

To whom shall he go for a formula to nourish his child? 
What God has given man suffices Life. What man makes of 
God's gift destroys life. Wherever he looks he sees the folly 
of seeking to explain creation as a protoplasmic accident. He 
sees a design, yet, with back to God, he smashes that design only 
to hear his children wail. 

Oh, food of man, had you soul to match his soul, well might 
you ask, with all other things of God, to be let alone. 



§ 126 — PATRIOTISM 

In the Seventh century the ducal states of Germany were 
disintegrated by the corrupt administration of the counts who, as 
officials in charge of the territorial districts, were not super- 
vised by central authority. The complete disintegration of the 
states was brought about by a group of selfish interests that con- 
spired to control all their economic interests and to exercise ar- 
bitrary powers over their politics. 

This hidden power was, of course, invisible to the plain people 
until the crash ensued. 

In America, during the canned beef scandal of 1898, and 
continuing progressively until the almost thwarted probe of the 
Federal Trade Commission, ordered by President Wilson, Feb- 
ruary 7th, 191 7, complaints increasing in number and gravity were 
constantly heard in connection with the growth of a great invis- 
ible power in the United States. This power, like the German 
counts, sought to control economic interests and to exercise 
arbitrary powers over politics. 

The poison that destroyed the ducal states was at work in the 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 383 

new world. Much evidence had been adduced to indicate that 
this invisible power threatened to dominate visible government — 
to become greater than government. 

The two questions that had to be answered were: "Is the 
safety of democracy threatened by the unmolested growth of this 
invisible power?" "Has it already destroyed the functions of 
many democratic institutions, and does it menace them all ?" 

The answer to these questions involves the very essence of 
patriotism. 

The packers, who paid vast sums for the use of white space 
on which their declarations of patriotism were given to America 
at war, were involved in the system of invisible government that 
President Wilson wisely determined to examine. 

The investigation of the Federal Trade Commission has done 
much to clarify the meaning of patriotism. Heretofore the pub- 
lic has known little, if anything, of the motives which inspired 
and controlled that investigation. 

As one of the examiners of the Commission I believe my 
conferences with its members and staff have qualified me to de- 
scribe the principles by which its activities were guided. Those 
principles were based on a conception of patriotism for which 
millions of American boys have been ready, without question, to 
lay down their lives. 

Certainly the meaning of the word as it has been understood 
by the Federal Trade Commission is of interest to those boys. 
To the Commission as it exists in 191 7 and 1918 patriotism means 
much more than love of country. It means love of right govern- 
ment extending even into foreign countries. The man who loves 
only one little spot of ground may be a poor patriot and a dan- 
gerous citizen, even though he boasts of loyalty and courage. 

The father who loves only his own children, disregarding the 
children of his neighbour, may, in the narrowness of his interests, 
permit a condition to develop among his neighbor's children that 
will some day react upon his own to their destruction. 

The Kaiser was looked upon in Germany as the very father of 
German patriotism, but the world now knows that his patriotism, 
narrow and selfish, was crammed with ruin for his own people. 
He cared nothing for the happiness or the rights of other nations. 
His selfishness in disregarding the interests of all his neighbours 



384 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 

not only plunged them into anguish and desolation, but it 
brought anguish and desolation home to his own. 

The Kaiser was a bad patriot and a bad citizen because he 
neither loved right government in his own country, nor right 
government in any country. 

This attitude toward society, because it clashes with all the 
laws of God and man, is described not only as uncivilised but 
as barbarous; yet the same principle execrated and reprobated 
in the person of the Kaiser applies to every individual and 
group of individuals in the world, when their interest in life is 
confined to selfish pursuits. 

It was this brand of selfish patriotism that brought decay to 
civilisation in the valley of the Nile. The Egyptians could weld 
copper, an art lost to the modern world. The Egyptians who 
built their magnificent temples, their mausoleums, their pyramids, 
employing mechanical devices that have become extinct, were 
reaching out for universal democracy. Selfish patriotism under- 
mined the Egyptian ideal, and to-day the land of the Pharaohs 
is dead, never to be born again. 

Selfish patriotism brought decay to Greece and Rome. Greece 
flourished in glory, producing Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, three 
of the clearest thinkers the world has ever known. Our Amer- 
ican museums are graced with fragments of the art of her sculp- 
tors. Even her songs have been preserved, but because selfish 
patriotism followed in the wake of her luxury ancient Athens is 
no more. 

Socrates cried out against the decay that threatened Greece 
but the masters of her wealth would not listen to him. They 
gave him hemlock and sent him to his death. 

Well has it been said that when a nation crucifies its thinkers, 
that moment that nation dies. 

Rome, mistress of the world, stretched her boundaries as far 
north and west as Scotland. Her galleys sailed every sea, carry- 
ing her laws to all parts of the known world, returning with 
tribute, power and luxury to pour into her lap. Steeped at last 
in the dregs of narrow patriotism and brute selfishness, she awoke 
to find that decay had sapped her strength. When the barbarians 
came down from the North with their battering rams they 
smashed her gates, demolished her statues and pillaged her 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 385 



libraries. Departing with her wealth, they left her lying pros- 
trate on the sands of time. 

Out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the Germanic states 
developed, and among them was born what is said to be one 
of the first democratic assemblies of Europe. 

The new commandment, "Love one another," had not yet been 
applied by the patriots who posed as her rulers, statesmen and 
economic princes, but slowly the new philosophy of life, based on 
that commandment, crept into the hearts of the people, where it 
was dumbly cherished even though still unheeded by their 

rulers. 

Eventually the new philosophy pushed its way westward as tar 
as England. Men began to clamour for liberty, the very essence 
of democracy. Some of them became bold enough to advance 
the proposition that it was not true that a king could do no wrong. 
So clamorous became their cries that finally at Runnymede 
the Magna Charta was drawn up and signed. That document, 
although it contained the seeds of America's Declaration of In- 
dependence, still provided too much protection for selfishness 
and special privilege. There was cockle among its wheat, and 
King John held much the same contempt for democracy as that 
cherished by Napoleon and Wilhelm Hohenzollern. 

At last, from England and Holland, stalwart men who loved 
freedom though they had not yet formulated its principles, 
came to America, where the foundations of democracy in time 
were established on soil consecrated by blood and sacrifice. 

Wealth came, and with wealth, danger. The growth of selfish 
interests threatened the institutions that had cost so much. 

Then Lincoln spoke, and after two millions of lives had been 
snuffed out in again uniting two peoples as one people under 
one flag and one law, the fools of their day killed the rail- 
splitter. With his death the last slave that will ever tread 
America's shores was free. 

Again wealth threatened. Riches began to pour down from 
the mountains and up from the plains. Our rivers could not carry 
it so we built cars of steel and rolled them over rails from ocean 
to ocean. With riches came sick ideals. 

Finally we received the first of many shocks. Little Belgium, 
protected by treaties, was crushed like an eggshell. The liber- 



386 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 



ties of the world were in the balance. America was again 
divided. Blinded by easy living and the gushets of her wealth, 
she was unable to see as a united nation the difference between 
right and expediency. Thus divided she could not interfere. 

The bleeding little victim of selfishness incarnate stood the 
raiding monster off a little while, but in that moment of tragedy 
a better world was born. At last, chastened by the sufferings of 
others, the scales fell from our eyes, and our nation, united once 
more in a lofty ideal of patriotism, sent her boys forth to mingle 
their blood with the blood of a ravaged world, that true patriot- 
ism might again inflame the souls of men, not on any one little 
spot of ground, but all over the earth. 

Through the deaths of millions, some of whom we once fool- 
ishly thought we held in contempt, characterising them always as 
"foreigners" when they sought liberty at our gates, even as our 
own fathers, who were also "foreigners," sought it before us, we 
have learned that in America there are not two or three sets of 
laws, but one law, and that under that one law there cannot flour- 
ish two or three kinds of citizens, but one kind of citizen. 

The time had finally come for our government to say to any 
man who lives under the shadow of our flag : "You will remain 
here a true patriot, or you shall be sent away an outcast and an 
ex-patriot forever. The measure of your patriotism is not found 
in what you are able to gouge out of life, but what you put into 
it." 

The Federal Trade Commission was the feeble instrument 
through which our government first probed the disease at home, 
hesitatingly, cautiously feeling its way until it was sure the ulcer 
had been reached. 

The Commission embodied the doctrine that the disciples of 
special privilege in America are not patriots ; that the masters of 
industry in America who seek to control legislation and to dom- 
inate the enforcement of laws to suit their own ends are not 
patriots; that eminent scientists and skilful lawyers who defend 
commercial expediency at the expense of justice and public wel- 
fare are not patriots; that it is necessary, in order to preserve 
democratic institutions, to place under proper and lawful control 
all those groups of narrow and selfish men whose activities tend 
to set up an invisible government, thus rendering good govern- 



MYSTERIES OF FOOD 387 

ment ineffective, or substituting bad government in its place. 

Distracted by the horrors of overseas events, we have become 
almost indifferent to our home affairs, except in so far as they 
affect our winning of the war. 

The Commission turned our attention to the Hun within our 
own gates, and as the evidence of its investigation discloses, the 
warning was sounded none too soon. 

To its obvious and inevitable conclusions one might add that 
food manufacturers who seek to perpetuate pernicious methods 
of sophisticating the nation's dietary rather than revolutionise 
a system that can be defended only behind falsehood are not 
patriots ; that the plain people who cling to follies that curse 
generations yet unborn are not patriots ; that the ignorant and 
bigoted who foster religious prejudices and racial animosities are 
not patriots. 

The sons of America who followed Pershing to Europe in 1918 
went forth to uphold by their deaths the loftiest principle to 
which mankind has ever subscribed. They did not go forth to 
perpetuate narrowness, selfishness, greed or false patriotism at 
home. 

They have shown America the perils of these selfish pursuits. 
They have opened America's eyes to the meaning of service to 
others. They have done much to prepare America to face the 
hard conditions that must be faced if these beloved hills and 
plains of ours are not to take their place beside Egypt, the old 
Greece, Ancient Rome and Modern Prussia. 





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